Non Interference
by Zacas
Summary: AU. A Chinese/Japanese Tenchi leads a crusade against Jurai's "NI" policy. Contains violence.
1. New Kain

**I don't own Tenchi, Ghost in the Shell cyber brains, or any of the song lyrics that appear in these fictions. **

**New ****Kain**

"**Oh, the humanity!"** It was a statement made famous by Herbert Morrison's account of the Hindenburg disaster. The same phrase repeated again and again across the known universe as GP Headquarters burnt in the sky over Planet Vestra. Broadcasted all over the known universe, a surprise strike on Galaxy Police Headquarters had dealt the lethal blow. Live. It was a terrorist proclamation meant to shock the universe. Pirate ships of all makes, builds, and _flags _had descended upon the once mighty station like thousands of hyenas upon a great lion. The attack had been of a scale not seen since the formation of the Galactic Union, which had put an end to most interplanetary conflicts and wars.

Littered amongst the far corners of the universe, the broadcasting stations - which had been simultaneously hacked into and subverted to show the gruesome display - remained clueless as to how the hack had been achieved. It was like black magic had committed it. Technicians and even talk show hosts were busy scrambling to sever the transmission. But even when the cops arrived to shut off the awful digital stream, no one could do anything to stop Galactic Union citizens from witnessing severed arms and legs riding atop billowing clouds of red mist. Nor could they block the visage of the silent flames pouring out of the ruined GP Headquarters.

It'd been a slaughter.

Even untrained civilian eyes could see it.

Now every single eye across the universe watched pirate ships scurry over the horrifying devastation like cockroaches, uncaring for their fallen comrades, only interested in ransacking as much high-tech weapons and loot from the fallen GP Headquarters as possible. Predictably, any survivors were executed on the spot wherever they were found. The occasional plea for mercy and subsequent silencing gunshot rang clear as a bell when viewing an appropriate channel…

But _why? _What was the point?

_**Oh the humanity!**__ It's burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it's falling, it's crashing! Watch it! Watch it!_

To the planner behind the attack, the point was obvious. There hadn't even been much of a choice in the matter even – it was either inflict misery and death upon the relatively innocent GP or undergo watching his homeworld and countless others like it be relegated to the same suffering.

'I'm sorry…' he prayed into the fires surrounding him – even though he could never afford to let the Universe know of his remorse. On Jurai, especially, the blue-blooded bastards had to be convinced that harassing Earth, Gilben, Harrofax, or any other so-called "backwater" planet would be punished. Even if it meant he had to make alliances with evil men like the pirate guilds and lead them to ultimate victory over defenders of justice. The defense of primitive worlds was his overriding concern…

Incredibly, he himself - a mere "knuckle dragging" earthling - had alone been the one to possess the resources, connections and personality required in order to unite the pirate clans. He alone possessed the correct blend of charisma, knowledge, desperation, cunning, patience, lack of self preservation, and yes… even altruism. And it'd worked… so far.

On channel 666, watched closely by trillions of citizens across the universe, he, the hated mastermind behind the uprising from earth, stepped cautiously through the blasted, burning corridors of GP Headquarters on his way to his final, long-schemed for destination. There he would meet his fate… or at least what he thought would be his fate. But what else could possibly happen to him? Washu had sworn that the process would effectively kill him. Rip his soul from his body. Blend it together with an unimaginable evil and reform him into something so much worse… so, surely, his fate was a near certainty.

Excellent! It had never been his plan to survive the conflict, anyway… so whatever might occur, it really didn't matter to him in the end. He took solace that his "death" would be for a noble cause at least, right? Darn, he hoped so - he couldn't imagine so much death failing to be justified in the end. But, of course, his Galactic Union spectators didn't regard his cause in such a positive light! It wasn't noble! It came from the pits of Hell! Indeed, the wail of billions across the Universe rose up in disgust as they watched horror after horror slither across their TV screens like a multifaceted nightmare.

"For Goddess sake!" the voices of billions cried, "Turn it off! Turn it off!" Newest on the screens, a butchered family - ill-timed visitors to GP Headquarters - lay amongst the ruins in front of the hated mastermind. The corpses' eyes remained open in silent accusation as the man passed over them. The youngest child, a girl perhaps five years old, cried bitterly even in death, reaching out for the decapitated remains of her mother. The flames hadn't reached them yet.

Unseen in the massive clanking suit he wore, the evil mastermind shed a tear for the little girl. It hurt so much to see her corpse. Shit, how could it not? _To think… he'd once been a kindergarten teacher…_

Casting the tiny victim out from his mind, he proceeded to wade through the carnage of wrecked bulkheads, shattered hard-crete, battle zones, and remains of officers' heroic last stands. All the butchery rolled past horrified TV screens throughout the universe as untold spectators followed the man's steady, metal-stomping progress through the burning remains of GP Headquarters.

Gruesomely, at one point he was even forced to gun down a survivor - some poor kid, a new recruit - who tried to ambush him. A Gatling cannon mounted under the suit's oversized arm sawed the poor recruit literally in half. Trillions of tears flowed for the victim. But_ zillions_ of tears poured out in hatred against the fiendish man in the metal suit who'd just killed him: The renegade Prince of Pirates from Earth. The one who couldn't let things remain the way they had for millennia: Non Intervention.

The Prince of Pirates regarded the policy like an abolitionist would regard slavery. It was unacceptable. He often recalled that slavery was once considered upper-class, widely accepted, and challenged only by "fools" on Earth. Correspondingly, the policy of Non Intervention was law in the universe challenged by no one except the occasional looney. NI had been instituted at the behest of the GU's current puppet master: Planet Jurai. Supposedly, the policy was meant to help defend primitive cultures against suffering from the shock of advanced societies "tampering or usurping" control of society and "debasing" the natural evolution of such worlds.

That included withholding medical aid – and denying others the right to give it.

Truly, Non Intervention was only about maintaining the status quo of power. And it was such a ridiculous farce, too – given that Jurai had been founded in its genesis by roving bands of murderous pirates that'd decided to settle down and grow roots. But now, of course, universal institutions – like the GP – had been utilized to enforce NI since the dawn of recorded history…

…well, or at least since the dawn of "important" history, or the official recorded history of Planet Jurai.

Still pretentious as ever, Jurai would finally be humbled, and then the man could finally rest – or at least whatever remained of him after today could finally rest. The destruction of GP Headquarters was merely a stepping stone on his path to taming Jurai – or at least convincing its monarchy, including Princess Ayeka and Princess Sasami – that Non Intervention was to be a foible of the past. Like slavery. A hideous practice that'd resulted in the suffering and deaths of untold trillions. Truly, such a policy was unforgivable.

_But it should still have never come to this…_

Despite himself, the man swiveled his battle suit around to glance at the skewered little girl. Such evil… all done at his command. He fired an incendiary round to cremate her – there were some nasty cults who paid for such corpses and he didn't want her to wind up in some sicko's collection before the burning station could claim the body. Like plenty of the deceased GP officers' bodies probably would. Oh well…

_God… it should have never come to this…_

After the first decade of war, after the first million or so casualties he'd wrought against the enforcers of Non Intervention, it'd seemed like he'd achieved victory for his people. Planet Earth and its more "backward" counterparts across the universe had been granted advanced medical technology to cure disease and even agricultural technology to eliminate hunger. Of course, he'd had to bestow that technology upon them himself, but that was okay as long as the GU didn't stop him. As a result, deaths due to disease had dried up – and wars as a result of starving belies had largely disappeared as well.

Success! Or so he'd thought.

But, of course, it simply wasn't to be. Rather, Jurai and its puppet, the Galactic Union, had shown the depths of Non Intervention's inherent ruthlessness. An initiative to seize back every bit of technology won for the 'Neanderthals' was being worked quickly through the courts. And that was something he hadn't counted on…

How could he have suspected it? It was food and medicine! Honestly, who could steal medicine from the dying? Or take food away from the hungry? Just to obey a flawed ideal?

Oh, but they were trying… So, Galaxy Police Headquarters now burnt silently in its orbit over the planet Vestra. Pirate ships late to arrive were already beginning to turn away from the looter saturated husk of the space station to instead savage the planet below. After all – there was loot to be had down there, too… and women to rape, slaves to take, children to sell on the black markets, etc.

The mastermind puked. Catching the vomit – a whitish cream that was the futuristic equivalent of a half-digested MRE - the suit's life support systems administered relaxants and mood softeners to calm the pilot. But it didn't help much. He was surprised anything was left in his stomach at all given the operation he'd just undergone… he didn't even have a digestive tract now. He'd fully committed to today's mission.

Nauseating. That term could best describe how he felt working with the pirates – knowing what his minions were doing to innocent people. But soon he could be rid of them, if his theory panned out. _And it should work!_ Washu promised him so… though such an achievement would come at enormous cost. Also, it was possible that Washu was only trying to get him killed; his bloody and ruthless crusade across the stars had finally begun to earn her ire. Especially since he'd used some pretty advanced truth serums on her. His heart broke every time he thought about it – but what in God's name could he have done different? How could he have just sat back and let "primitive" people and their children die? Suffer? Wither from disease? Starve to death as ape-like warlords horded food supplies? He couldn't have!

_I used to be a kindergarten teacher, after all…_

Reaching his final destination, the big metal suit's footsteps at last fell silent. There in front, a gigantic steel portal, guarded by a micro-singularity, crackled with impossible energy. Zeus, at the height of his power on Mount Olympus would've withered with jealousy at the sight in front of him now. The man cringed… what evil could possibly be caged behind _that_ kind of a barrier? Honestly, how could anything _really _be so dangerous as to warrant such an extreme measure as a singularity lock? And how could he possibly tame it?

Images of Ryoko fluttered into his mind's eyes – as they often did – and he was reminded that such a dangerous creature could very well exist… Ryoko could butcher an army single handedly if so inclined. Furthermore, Washu had promised him beyond doubt that this so-called arch criminal "Kain" who was imprisoned behind the singularity really was some sort of ultimate, living super weapon. He'd never doubted the diminutive scientist before… and he certainly wasn't going to now. Not if a darned _singularity _was being used to imprison this "Kain."

Once more, the man swiveled the suit backward to glare at the burning wreckage of GP Headquarters - it was price for his arrival here, at _this _prison cell. The lives destroyed couldn't be wasted in vain… so it had to work! And… it _would _work, surely! This _wasn't_ going to be a suicide mission, darn it! It didn't make sense: even if Washu really wanted to kill him, she would have _never_ sent him out to slaughter innocent GP officers or release a catastrophic fiend like Kain upon the universe in the process. She'd have found a way to stop him…

_So, it was going to work…_

The suit turned back to face the singularity. Servo motors squealed and pressurized seals popped loose as the suit's cockpit depressurized. The atmosphere was still stable outside of the suit - but already the man could feel the cold of space begin creeping into the ruined station, despite the flames, as the suit peeled away from his body. It unfolded briskly and efficiently - leaving him in nothing but a skin-tight pilot's suit. Summoning his holographic laptop - a piece of technology "borrowed" from Washu - he gave the suit commands to close itself back up and engage the autopilot program. Obediently, the suit sealed itself back up at once - and then armed its most potent weapon: A subspace disrupter mounted on its back, which was perhaps the most potent device he'd ever stolen from Washu's lab.

_I'm so sorry, Washu. _Typing in the final series of commands, he sent his battle armor marching straight into the terrifying singularity barrier - and then turned his back on ensuing apocalypse to come: Soon, white hot light filled the chamber as the disrupter on the suit's back activated and dissolved in the great flow of energy, which drowned out every other detail to be seen. The God-like display was totally silent, strangely… but the man felt as though hundreds of electrified ants were busy scurrying all over his skin. Until it finally ended.

The singularity collapsed. Now he awaited the emergence of this so-called arch fiend "Kain." Scared, but determined more than anything else, he turned back around to face the outcome of his scheme bravely, raising up his chin and glaring straight into the blackness where the micro-singularity had once been. No retreat. No regret. This was how it _had _to be!

Inside his body, complex machinery that he'd replaced his internal organs with activated silently. Stealthily. Not to be made known to the beast in the prison cell. Soon, he would starve to death. Truly, there was no going back for him – his own digestive tract and most all else were gone in favor of hiding this secret machinery he'd need to tame the beast. It'd already been ten hours since the operation – and he guessed he only had a few more left to live now. Only victory could save him.

But victory could be elusive. The first sign of the presence of evil - and the struggle to come - was a black mist seeping into existence where the singularity had once been. The fog lingered in the air for a time, hushed and silent. Then, suddenly, the impression of a man appeared like a caricature painted in smoke. Words spilled from the darkness: "What foolish little pirate…" issued forth a deep, creepy voice from the abyss, "…would dare to release me?"

Without hesitation: "A _prince _of pirates. That's who. I am one who seeks to make an alliance with you… of sorts," the man responded bravely; his feet were planted apart in a standard military posture, arms behind his back. Face neutral.

Cynical and horrific, "What makes you think that I'd ever ally myself with the likes of _you_, mortal? Huh? Hah! What can you offer me! You're little more than a _flea_! I'd be foolish to even listen to what you have to say!" mocked the voice. The shadows coalesced together to form a more distinct image of a man. Eerily, a white mask formed over the head. "Why don't I just kill you instead?" the evil god inquired.

Time to gamble. The man smirked. "Hah! Well, doesn't it seem strange how you needed this little 'flea' to break you out of the clink, then, oh powerful one!" the man jested. "And you're not very thankful, either. _I _broke you free and now you threaten to kill me! You also misunderstand why I've come all the way here to GP Headquarters… I desire your submission more than I do an alliance! From this time on you will obey me!"

Riotous laughter shook the corridor.

Shadows crashed forward at him like a wave, swirling around his body and hoisting him several feet off the blasted ground. But to Kain's annoyance, the puny creature didn't wriggle or kick like the typical victim; it just kept still and glared at him with a defiant smirk on its face.

What a horror! What a show! None of the spectators throughout the universe could believe the events transpiring on their TV screens. _And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world. __**Oh, the humanity!**__ This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed._

Truly, the man was terrified, too - not of death, but of failure. But he didn't show it. He couldn't afford to. He had only _one_ desperate gambit to win… and it would require baiting this creature perfectly. Otherwise, a lot of people were going to die for absolutely nothing… or worse, even _less _than nothing! Trillions of viewers watched the duel unblinkingly. For many, their own fates were being decided with the Prince of Pirates.

"Tell me, beast! What makes you think that you have any power over me whatsoever?" the man declared.

Intrigued, the white mask shifted into an expression of bemused condescension. "Such confidence!" the voice growled at the puny creature, releasing a powerful spike of energy into its flesh, which did… absolutely nothing? Now the white mask distorted into a frown.

Curious, Kain pulled the Prince of Pirates in for a closer inspection; he fired a second shot of energy into its flesh… which had absolutely no effect on him again. Frustrated, the god even squeezed down with awesome physical force, but nothing could damage the victim in his grasp.

"Gah!" the evil god roared – flinging the man hard into a wall which dented under the impact. But, impossibly, the man stood right back up and approached his would-be killer. The man smiled. Though alarmed - reading that his internal shield generator and kinetic dampeners were at 50% power - he still resumed his militaristic pose in front of the dark god and smirked. He even dared to *tsk* at the monster. "It's only a matter of time before you recognize the inevitable, Kain! The universe has moved on since your time! A hundred years in the freezer has made you obsolete! Whatever technology brought you to life has become outdated and improved upon! You're nothing of the terror you once were! Nothing!" _An utter lie…_

But, incredibly, the dark god was shaken. Sensing that it would be now or never, the man activated the next device sown into his desecrated belly – a psychic lash. It was another device stolen from the intergalactic genius, Washu. With incredible force, the device smacked the god like a fist from Heaven, filling it with a world of pain – filling the chamber with horrifying sound. Truly, the sound of a god screaming was a terrifying event.

…and so was reading 0% power in the equipment.

Bringing online the final device - one of his own, modified inventions which he dubbed a "Soul Catcher" - he planted a smirk firmly on his face and locked hard into his military stance. Pure poker faced, he hoped and prayed that his gamble would pay off. If not, well, there was nothing more he could do to help now. Failure would mean a very slow and painful death – provided that Kain could restrain himself from just smiting him on the spot. At least it'd been a very good, well thought out attempt… and he'd committed to it for the right intentions.

But fate was kind; the plan worked.

Kain lurched forward, eye-to-eye with the puny mortal standing in front of him and glowered. Hate and frustration oozed out of the mask, adding thickness to the black fog. Then, monstrous glee spread across the mask as Kain shook his head in slow remonstration…

…The puny creature could never own HIM!

Trillions watched - horrified - as the Great Enemy thought slain a hundred years ago now spread his arms wide open again for his next kill. It didn't matter that the next victim was to be the universally hated Prince of Pirates - for soon millions of good and innocent souls would find themselves trapped in the evil god's horrible grasp, too! Wails rose up across the universe – what horror! But what happened next terrified them even more…

Making a sound that could've either been a chuckle or a growl, Kain whispered his final threat: "If I can't destroy you, little pirate… then I'll absorb you instead!"

The man was sucked forward… and Kain laughed at him, claws spread wide open to embrace his victim. The brave man finally showed a trace of fear – convincing the monster to reel him in even faster. But at the very last second the victim barked out in victorious laughter instead. Kain ignored the creature's sudden levity - he'd heard others laugh while dying in the past - but _did _feel a bit strange once the earthling's flesh made contact with his shadows. It felt… it felt like he'd gone _numb_?

"What!" the beast roared. The mask squeezed together forming a grimace of rage. What was happening! Fascinated, the hijacked, terrorist cameras watched the dark god thrash in the corridor - ripping giant shards of titanium and hard-crete out of the walls. A blue halo formed around the monster's body as it tore reality itself asunder in its wrath.

Gradually, the mask lost its anger… and confusion took its place. The god stopped moving, and finally fear registered on its bone-white mask. "No…" it whispered - actually staring into the cameras, and then dissolved down upon itself.

On the floor, the shadows and smoke contorted, bubbling like the noxious stew from a witch's cauldron. The awesome being known as Kain appeared to be dead… and viewers from all four corners of the Universe rejoiced…until the shadows rose back up. Slowly, the blob of darkness stood; the mask hovering in the mass's center now sported a deep crack. Purple blood spilled out of the wound. But unseen, deep within, two souls warred for dominance over the deity's body.

The fabricated, god-like intelligence known only as Kain - a being molded by an almost mythological weapons lab untold millennia ago - fought desperately to slay the foreign consciousness that it'd underestimated and taken into its body. At the center of the struggle lay the Soul Catcher device - an invention specifically designed to reel in Kain's consciousness and leave his body vulnerable to possession. It'd been a mistake to try and absorb the Prince of Pirates!

It was like tug-of-war: either consciousness struggled to drag its counterpart into the device, where it could be trapped and ultimately destroyed. Pure willpower was the ammunition of this battle - no energy strikes, bullets, or bombs could help either opponent to win. It simply boiled down to who was the tougher soul… and, of course, the Prince of Pirates won.

Kain had languished far too long in his god-like body and had forgotten how to fight and defeat an equal opponent. His soul was weak. His loss at the hands of the GP and the King of Jurai had all but proven that already in the past… and so now Kain screamed - a sound that grew high pitched as he disappeared into the soul catcher. He vanished, and so the device was then ejected from the billowing mass of shadows. _It'd been a success…_

An instant later, the mask recovered; the cracks that oozed purple blood onto the ground dried up. Gradually - testing its limits - the immense blob of darkness condensed down upon itself, solidifying into a naked human shape: it was the Prince of Pirates! But now every feature upon him was obsidian black - even his eyes, which regarded the world coldly. The white mask had since formed into a perfect replica of his face…

Into the camera, the mask smiled - and spoke in a rich, baritone voice that was a blend of Kain's voice and the Prince of Pirate's original timbre. It issued one final statement to the viewers watching around the universe before activating a holographic laptop to terminate the terrorist broadcast: "Planet Jurai!" he declared magnanimously. "Cease and desist your persecutions of the lower class worlds! For this is the one and only warning that I, Tenchi Masaki, will grant you to live-and-let-live! Further action in your courts will lead to unimaginable destruction…"

Then the transmission ended. Abruptly. Whatever black magic had held the broadcasting stations captive was gone. New Kain vaporized the Soul Catcher - obliterating the mind of the entity that'd once been the soul of the deity's body. Now Tenchi owned the power - so he had the capability to, at last, put an end to this disgusting conflict over NI once and for all.

Jurai wouldn't back down from his threat…

_Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming! Lady, I… I… I'm sorry. Honest. I… I can hardly breathe. I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed. __**Oh, the humanity!**_


	2. Ryoko

**I don't own Tenchi, Ghost in the Shell**** cyber brains, or any of the song lyrics that appear in these fictions. Nor do I own the opening paragraphs of my chapters – which are borrowed from the encyclopedia on Wikipedia. ****J**

**Ryoko**

Multiple Personality disorder describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities. New Kain wondered if perhaps his assimilation with an evil god could qualify him for the disorder? It was certainly plausible. And the more he considered it, the more he began to recall Washu's warning: [T]he process would effectively kill him. Rip his soul from his body. Blend it together with an unimaginable evil and reform him into something so much worse! Was this true?

Tenchi certainly didn't feel like himself anymore… even though he could tell his soul definitely still existed in this new body. He'd wondered if meshing the two beings together would give birth to a new individual - and a new soul - while killing the originals. But sadly, Tenchi realized that his soul was still very much present - it hadn't been replaced by a new one as he'd hoped during assimilation.

Shogun in his ship's throne-like chair, Tenchi Masaki - or Kain, nobody knew for sure - sat with his inky black fingers pressed together like a James Bond baddie. His expression, however, was devoid of the requisite evil glee essential for such a portrayal; too much grief covered his face; the emotion undermined any facade of plotting a new war or calculating another empire's demise. No, Tenchi harbored much more self centered thoughts this evening…

Am I dead? Worse?

Otherwise, he still reeked with power and authority: broad shoulders filled his captain's garb, which resembled something that Blackbeard the Pirate might've worn, and his skull white head sported a lion's mane of black hair. Sleek, clever eyes stared into oblivion beneath his ragged bangs, and occasionally his fingers would stroke his coal-black goatee. But even these powerful features seemed a bit subdued presently. The crew members surrounding him on the ship's command deck were also affected by his gloom – along with being intimidated by the ramifications of his new, obsidian black body. But not a single one of them dared to inquire what was wrong.

Tenchi hadn't warned them of his plans; so the merger with Kain had shocked all of them. So now, most were theorizing what was wrong with him… or worse: that they were in the presence of the evil god, Kain. Had the Prince of Pirates actually been devoured by the monster?

Souja, Tenchi's pirate flagship, floated menacingly next to the burning GP Headquarters. Watching it die. The mighty ship was yet another of Washu's inventions that Tenchi had 'borrowed' from her lab. But now, rather than being docked in the scientist's private hanger, the ship sat back and watched its comrades ransack the dying GP space station. Execute survivors. And, of course, round up hostages, victims, and especially new slaves. The Souja had already recovered its prize: Kain.

And God… the victory made Tenchi sick. Not quite as bad as the pirates around him, but still quite ill. ThoughTenchi/Kain was now clad in full pirate's regalia atop his throne, the anachronistic clothing didn't shield his minions from the raw power being exuded by Kain's deific flesh. Or his emotional discontent. The combination flooded the air with a deluge of static electricity - and some of the subordinates even looked a bit ridiculous as their hairs stood perfectly on end as a result.

Tenchi noticed none of his mood's symptoms on deck, far too absorbed in the ensuing plummet of GP Headquarters down onto planet Vestra. Thousands upon thousands would die when the starfort collided with the planet's surface, and he would stop the descent if only he could… but alas, you simply don't issue orders to pirates that you can't enforce. And his pirate comrades had been adamant on striking this final, sick form of poetic "justice" against the GP. He was not yet firmly enough in control of his body to force the pirate guilds totally into compliance. So, again, Tenchi knew innocents would die.

Slowly, he lost another piece of his mind… again. Lyrics from a song he'd listened to as a child way back on Earth resurfaced into his subconscious:

_As I walk through the valley_

_O__f the shadow of death_

_I take a look at my life_

_A__nd realize there's nothin' left_

_Cause I've been blastin'_

_A__nd laughing so long_

_That even my mama thinks_

_T__hat my mind is gone_

Tenchi squashed the errant song out of his mind before it could bring him any lower. But some damage had already been done by the song: Beyond any doubt he'd been "blastin' and laughing so long that even [his] mama thought his mind was gone." Or at least she would think that, if his mother were still alive to see him. Black eyes squeezed shut. God… how he wished he could go back to the old days, his "carnival of life," as Ryoko had once called it. He missed his family…

Complicating the pain in his heart, there was now a huge chunk of him that loved the carnage he'd wrought – the loss of innocent life – and especially the destruction of GP Headquarters, which could easily, in turn, send the universe into a crashing tailspin. Kain. Memories of the villainous god's life remained locked in his skull – including all of the programming and emotional baggage that made Kain such a ferocious killer.

_Yes… we are a__ killer, aren't we?_

Kain's programming lurked just beneath the surface of his mind. And it was patient, like it was waiting to take control of him. It was a part of his body now, after all. Worse, Tenchi even felt the thrill of revenge against the GP for having been locked up behind their singularity lock for so long… which wasn't a good sign. Kain's soul was gone… but what remnants did the bio-droid leave in his memories and programming?

Thankfully, the majority of him was still Tenchi Masaki, which was mercifully evident by the fact that, as he watched GP Headquarters die in front of him, nausea still clenched up in his stomach as a result. Puke even gurgled up in his throat as the death of untold Vestrans came to his attention when the HQ finally exploded in a nuclear fireball on the planet's surface. He could almost hear their screams…

"Get us out of here now," Tenchi ordered. "The rest of the Galaxy Police have had sufficient time to mount a counterattack. We're not going to get ambushed by a bunch of vengeful cops! Take us home to Hades Station!"

_Wait, Tenchi!__ We can slaughter the last of them! Massacring the enemy is what we were designed to do! Mihoshi and Kiyone will be part of the counterattack, too… and then we can…_

"Yes… Lord Kain…" his lieutenant coughed, unsure of what to call the Prince of Pirates anymore. Tenchi merely shot the man a reproachful glare. He was _not _Kain… he hoped. The ships entered hyperspace one-by-one until nothing was left floating over Planet Vestra except for debris, wreckage, and thousands of bodies that were all still frozen in space. In the end, few of the deceased officers were going to be salvaged for burial; most would be drawn down into the planet's nuked atmosphere and be cremated en messe. The Grand Marshal himself lay out in space – an execution bullet through his brain. He wasn't going to be recovered in time, either.

Watching all of its fleet enter hyperspace, Souja was last to depart the battlezone; so Tenchi caught one last, unfettered glimpse of the firestorm raging upon Vestra's surface. GP Headquarters' reactor had exploded much more violently than expected. Darn. Then, as the Souja plunged forward into hyperspace, Tenchi kept watch as the stars streaked across its HUD screen like billions of tears washing down the black, obsidian skin of space. Washing away all the carnage. He sighed…

Well, he'd achieved his goal - an impossible goal - one bought with untold thousands of innocent lives. His conscience staggered under the weight of it. And his skin could just as easily be colored red now instead of hellish black – he'd purchased it with an ocean of blood.

_My __God… _he closed his eyes. If ever he felt regret for the many battles he'd chosen to wage, it was now. How he longed to go back to happier times! It wasn't fair… Why did Jurai have to be so obstinate! If King Azusa - the ungrateful _bastard! - _had just seen sense and ended the policy of Non Intervention, then none of the decade of bloodshed would have occurred. He could have easily done so… and then the "Earth Uprising" and the "Prince of Pirates" would have never come to be!

_But then we could have never been together like this…__ and our programming could have never been fulfilled._

Most critically - on a personal level - Tenchi realized that he would never have had to leave his family… or drive them away from him with his mad schemes.

_But then you would have never known my power!_

Thirty years! It'd been thirty Earth years since the cursed war had started! Of course, the first twenty years had been little more than preparation and resource gathering for sending technology to the "lesser" planets, and oiling his war machine; the latter ten had been the gruesome part. But together, those thirty years of bloodshed had chiseled away at his sanity, layer by layer, chunk by chunk, until now whatever remained of him was blended with a sociopathic shinigami! Thirty years… had it really been so long? Had he really been alone for so very long?

_Yes… and the wait was well worth it, wasn't it!__ Let us burn the galaxy together as we were created to do!_

On the bright side of things, only thirty-_five_ years had passed since a certain wonderful day had come to pass in China, which had changed his life forever. That day, Tenchi Masaki had learned that his little 'insignificant' home planet wasn't alone in the universe after all. Even now, his mind's eye could see the memory as though it'd all occurred yesterday. Vivid in his mind, it was clear and beautiful… even though the voice in his head tried it's best to distract him from experiencing it again:

_Tenchi! What are you doing! __Stop! Don't go into the past!_

Summer in China was beautiful - especially in July, 1999, when Tenchi Masaki been walking down Zhong Shan Road in Harbin, China, as a twenty-nine year old man. Although the weather rendered the city drab during the winter months, beautiful golden sunlight was shining down from the sky, casting soft shadows upon the ground where warm rays got intercepted by trees and tall buildings. Crowds of people were marching down the sidewalks, too, casting shadows of their own…

… while they stared at Tenchi, who had wandered out into a busy lane of Zhong Shan Road; cars were swerving and honking to avoid colliding with him. The people looked at each other. Some motioned at him from the sidewalk.

But nobody except Tenchi had spotted the disturbance in the sky overhead: two low-flying comets were falling to earth in broad daylight! Hypnotized, Tenchi had accidentally wandered into oncoming traffic in his stupor; so now the drivers on the clogged road were furious with him. Honking horns and furious rants spoken in Chinese assaulted him. But then the swirling fireballs caught everybody else's attention, too, and the honking and screeching of tires stopped.

Twin sonic booms exploded in the sky and shattered glass overhead; waves of crystalline shrapnel burst like fountains out over the sky - sparkling in the sunlight - and began raining their deadly shards down upon the terrified populace, convincing every last driver on the road to stop their cars - especially when all of the tires started popping.

Pedestrians sank down to their knees against the glass torrent. Most couldn't even move. But, unfazed, Tenchi followed the twisting trail of the comets…

_Stop it! Come back to reality! There is so much to do!__ We were meant to kill!_

Kain grinned. My God… it was like it all happened just yesterday! A paltry word like "vivid" couldn't begin to describe it. Wow! Could it be that his new brain had an enhanced capacity for recalling the past? Did it work much better? Given all of his amazing capabilities, it wouldn't be surprising. Perhaps that was the reason that Kain craved revenge against so many people… it felt like he really _was _in the past!

_Stop. Stop! STOP!__ Stop it, Tenchi! Don't go back to them again! They'll corrupt our purpose!_

In China, billowing smoke marked the impact site. The two comets touched down in Hulan, a nearby town. Complicating matters, Tenchi found that the impacts had leveled some poor villager's cornfield - a significant distance away from the main highway making the site difficult to reach. But still, as he walked through the remains of the field, even now up in the sky he saw remnants of a… an _exhaust trail_ drifting in the air!

Wait! It wasn't a comet at all!

Creeping over the edge of the blasted ground, Tenchi gawked at the ruined fuselage and the scattered debris he saw littered down in the pit. It hadn't been a comet! Rather, it'd been some kind of a super-sonic aircraft!

Of course it wasn't fathomable that someone could have survived such an earth shaking crash. From the looks of things, the ground could've just as easily been hit by an artillery shell! So, whoever had flown the plane was dead. But what on earth could it have been! He didn't think that China yet possessed any ultrasonic aircraft… so most likely, it was some sort of a spy plane? That made the most sense.

Ooh… and that wasn't good. Tenchi's guts cinched up like he was having a particularly foul case of indigestion. Foreign intelligence might have caused an incident here, so Tenchi knew it was time to back away right now – no way could he get caught up in any military shenanigans on Chinese soil. Heck no! He was a Chinese/Japanese hybrid who was living near the remains of medical camp 731 in Harbin! Furthermore, he had a _very_ strong dose of American GI in his blood to boot. There was already enough enmity against his kind!

The cab driver was still waiting on the road side, and Tenchi backpedaled toward it at top speed… until he spotted movement down there in the ruined fuselage.

What happened next made the young man jump. Without warning, a bolt of _lightning _blasted the hood clean off the fuselage! From the _inside_! And through the smoke and ashes, a silhouette staggered upright… and then abruptly fell out of the wreck and into the dirt. It was a person!

Stunned, Tenchi reversed direction and hopped right back down into the crater. Even on the way down to the battered fuselage, he cursed his own stupidity - the military would be here very soon! It was amazing they weren't already! He could be detained. But still… he pressed on.

Hopefully, he wouldn't get zapped by lightning, too!

It was a woman! There, lying unconscious in the dirt, was a beautiful young lady with spiky silver hair. Her appearance jolted him like an electric shock. What a funny color! No pilot suit, though… but then again there wasn't very much clinging to her body anymore except for torn rags, chemical stains, and lots and lots of blood. Her body was such a mess that he couldn't even identify her nationality.

"Oh, wo de tian!" Tenchi cursed in Chinese, hovering over the woman's inert form. His fingers danced in the air, unsure of whether to risk touching the injured woman or leave her to the eventual care of medical doctors… but of course, it wasn't certain when the military would be able to get her all the way over to a hospital! There was still no sign of their arrival, and the nearest doctor was back in Harbin!

She wasn't breathing! That did it! Tenchi rolled the woman over, supporting her neck just in case it was broken, and located the proper spot on her sternum. He pressed down with all his might on her ribcage – hoping to God that he could remember the CPR training he'd learned all the way back in high school. If not, well, then the woman was going to die!

Two pumps later, her ribs snapped underneath the pressure.

Good? He remembered the EMT back in high school saying that such was a good thing. But then, to his surprise, the woman didn't agree! Once her ribs broke, her golden eyes popped wide open and she screamed at the top of her melodious voice. Awesomely powerful hands wrapped around his throat. The strength in her arms returned, too, and she launched back up to her feet, hoisting Tenchi straight up into the air a full meter, and growled at him in panic and fear.

"What are you doing! Why did you do that to me!" she cried.

_English? The woman spoke English?_

He fish-mouthed, unsure what he could possibly say to calm her down. Sure, he knew how to speak English - heck, he was an English teacher back in Harbin! But the woman's strong fingers had closed off his larynx and restricted all oxygen flow to his lungs. He only managed to squeak out, "You… you weren't breathing… I… tried to help you so… please don't hurt me…"

Blasted silly, she was deaf to his pleas – but it didn't really matter. Five seconds after seizing him, she collapsed back down onto the dirt again, unconscious. Her silver hair was matted with blood and dirt; now he could see a cancerous looking head wound sitting atop her scalp.

_A concussion? Brain damage? Worse?_

Barely, Tenchi managed to pry her unconscious fingers off his throat and gasped for air. Holy shit! What monstrous strength! Quickly, he picked himself up off the ground. Even quicker, he retreated three full steps back up toward the edge of the crater before stopping again. He looked back. Fearful tears were streaming down the woman's face…

…so even in her sleep, the woman was terrified. And now she had broken ribs thanks to him!

Casting common sense to the winds, he dove back down into the crater and pulled her inch-by-inch out of the wreckage. Reaching the top, he saw that the taxi's wheels were just beginning to roll off down the road. Leaving him behind.

So, dragging the woman like a caveman by the hair, he flagged the taxi back down. The taxi stopped. Aided by the driver, he dragged the mysterious pilot back to the road and deposited her in the back seat – much more gently than he'd pulled her out of the crater – and shoved a thousand kuai into the driver's hand instructing him to break the speed limit and race to the nearest hospital post haste! Already, it looked like she had stopped breathing again!

"A-ya!" stammered the driver. Well darn! A thousand kuai! Pleased to receive such a large wad of money, he obeyed and quickly grew a lead foot. With Tenchi seated in the back seat with the woman, he screeched his tires and pealed down the modern roadway toward Harbin. The taxi man figured he could clean all the blood off his seats with that much money!

Twenty minutes took them all the way down the road to where the tall buildings of Harbin stood on the horizon – and suddenly the woman's eyes fluttered open again. Tenchi jumped a little and looked down. Now he got a much better chance to examine the color of her irises this time, given that he was able to actually breathe without being strangled.

_Whoa… they really _are_ yellow!_

"Ni shi shui?" she rasped – this time speaking in accented Chinese. _Who are you?_

Tenchi winced. Her sudden use of the Chinese language reinforced the idea that maybe she was part of some foreign military or intelligence agency. He shuddered. _Just what had he gotten himself into?_ He swallowed his concern; the woman's life was depending upon him right now! He cleared his throat. "Please stay quiet… you're in really bad shape," Tenchi shushed her in English, but then he caught himself. "I-I mean… you'll be okay, though. You just need to take it easy. Don't move!"

"Sure I won't," she laughed at him weakly. "Hey kid, come on! I don't _really_ look all that bad, do I?" Shakily – almost in a vain gesture – the woman cranked one of her arms up to straighten her mussed up hair; Tenchi noticed one of her fingers was missing. She noticed the missing appendage, too, but strangely, it caused her to laugh. Gurgling on the fluids caught in her throat, she leaned back on his lap and stared at her hand as though she were just appraising a ring.

"Well… maybe I _am _a bit more messed up than usual, huh? This'll hurt in the morning…"

Stupefied, Tenchi frowned at her – knowing that the poor woman had _definitely_ suffered a concussion or much worse. How could she be joking at a time like this! 'It would hurt in the morning?' Heck yes it was going to hurt in the morning! And it would hurt for a long, long time after that, too! _One doesn't just shrug off missing body parts._

Clearing his throat, "Mmm… well, everything else is still intact, though, so don't worry." It was an utter lie; too much blood and torn rags prevented any thorough inspection, so he honestly couldn't tell if she was okay or not. But a thin stream of blood was already beginning to drip off the back seat onto the floorboard of the taxi. Thankfully it was a slow drizzle – _not _the kind of flow indicative of a severed artery.

Still, it was cause for concern.

"I really think you'll be okay," Tenchi murmured – this time a little more truthfully. "But…" he reached toward her thighs where the blood seemed to be leaking. He paused. Cheeks colored red, he cleared his throat again. "Ma'am, I hope you don't take any offense, but I'm going to try to stop you from bleeding - and I think that there's something wrong with your… uh… there's something wrong down _there…_"

She blinked at him uncomprehendingly. But then suddenly, wrath contorted her face. "What!" Three things happened: her eyes dropped open; she swiveled her hips away from him; and both, scary strong hands shot straight towards his neck! Now she understood what he intended to do!

But then… she stopped.

Squishing himself against the back seat, Tenchi's attention flickered between the woman's powerful claws and her lion-eyed gaze. Involuntarily, one of his hands still dangled over her bloodied hips, but she paid it no mind. Instead, she stared right back at him, eyes locked with his.

Then her face slackened.

Most traces of alarm disappeared from her expression and she lowered her 'claws' slowly back to her sides. She'd caught a good look at his soul, she thought: His eyes held a lot of fear of her, which was typical of _anybody _whenever she got riled up. But covering all other emotions was… concern? _Real _concern? For _her_? Nobody had shown her any real concern in a long time… so, grudgingly, she looked away and nodded her head. She didn't need his help, but this earthling had no way of knowing it. Her cheeks colored red as his hands descended upon her, ripping away the fabric that shielded her dignity.

Gently, she felt him pry away the blood-caked material wrapped around her waist. He had no knife – so he had to pull the material apart with his bare hands, a feat which would've been impossible had the material not already been ripped so badly. Making sure not to reopen any of her wounds complicated the procedure… but he succeeded.

She coughed; his hands began slickly sliding all over her nether regions searching for the cut. He was being very gentlemanly about it, but she jumped a little bit when he finally located the source of the blood on her inner thigh.

Fabric ripped again – but this time it wasn't _her _fabric being torn apart. Glancing at her fondler, the woman's eyes dropped wide open again in surprise as he tore the sleeve off his long, silk shirt and used it to bandage her thigh. Even _she_ recognized that silk was an expensive material; she'd pillaged some of it from wealthy families out near Planet Jurai.

Slack-jawed, she watched as he pulled the shirt completely off his body – which he'd built up very nicely! – and then draped it carefully over her crotch and hips. Gently, he then pulled up her spine, slid the material under the small of her back, and tied the shirt together like a loin cloth. It was so… loving that the woman just stared at him. Until he lurched over to the side and violently puked out the window. And it was a projectile vomit, too! The poor guy had been holding it in for a while.

She chuckled dryly.

"I'm really sorry," he apologized, "I've always been too squeamish. Just a little bit of blood sets me off – and I'm afraid there's more than a little bit in here right now."

"That's okay," she smiled at him – with a few teeth missing, he noticed and cringed. But then she did something that made him blush an even deeper red than when he'd been prowling around her crotch. She rose shakily up on her hands and kissed him on the chin. It'd been a quick peck, but… wonderful. No woman had ever kissed him before…

_Come back!__ We have work to do! We weren't meant to indulge in such worthless a pursuit as love!_

Kain's mask cracked a smile; Tenchi had worn her blood on his chin for the entirety of that day. Like a lover's kiss… which it probably was, even way back then. Eventually, it had taken an old Chinese man to point out to him that he ought to wipe away "that lipstick" for decency sake! It had been embarrassing. And he'd had no idea it was still there.

But of course, nobody had ever known the so-called lipstick was really the blood of a powerful alien! …and a beautiful one to boot: The Space Pirate Ryoko!

_Don't go__! There are more important things to worry about! Places to destroy! People to kill!_

Gifted were China's taxi drivers. A unique breed of people born to execute maneuvers on the road that would humble veteran NASCAR drivers - demonstrated to Tenchi as the taxi driver weaved through traffic – they could even frighten the living daylights out of pedestrians by popping up on the sidewalks to bypass a traffic jam. As a result, Tenchi reached the closest hospital in Harbin quickly. Mercifully, it was located nearby Harbin's central train station so the roads were wide and easily navigable… for the taxi driver, at least.

Cops were hot in pursuit – but the taxi driver would be forgiven when it came to light that he was transporting a dying woman to the hospital.

Finally, the taxi screeched to a halt; unconcerned, the taxi man ignored the cops pulling up behind him and thumbed silently through his money in satisfaction. Pedestrians who'd dove out of the taxi's way were shouting curses now. But the officer standing guard at the entrance of the hospital spotted the bloody mess in the back seat. One bark of his powerful voice had the doctors rushing outside to help the victim.

In short order, a procession of IV's, nurses, and clean medical sheets stretched from somewhere deep within the hospital all the way out to the taxi.

At some point, Tenchi handed his China Bank card to one of the desk clerks he recognized, all of whom had come out to investigate the commotion. Without any hesitation at all - Ryoko watched - he told the clerk to charge whatever was necessary to the card, and that he'd be back tomorrow to pay more if the money wasn't sufficient. It was an unfortunate condition in the Chinese medical system that payment sometimes had to be delivered before services were rendered to the sick and dying. He didn't want to take a chance on that occurring here.

Glancing at the bloodied woman, Tenchi _thought _it would be the last time he'd see her. She was being dragged inside the hospital; Ryoko winked at him saucily while waving goodbye; he returned the gesture. But, strangely, there were _five _fingers on her hand when the doctors took her away… and she smiled at him with a mouth full of perfect teeth. And the whole time, her yellow eyes kept roaming over his features as if she were trying to memorize what he looked like…

… Why would she do that? What _was _she? And why the heck did she still seem interested in him all of the sudden?


	3. Hades Station

**I ****don't own Tenchi, Ghost in the Shell cyber brains, or any of the song lyrics that appear in these fictions.**

**Hades Station**

"That's not a moon; it's a space station!" scoffed one of the pirates standing aboard the Souja. Laughter. Snickers. Even a little applause. Some of the other killers on the bridge just smiled at the humor. As indicated, there on the ship's HUD floated an image that vaguely resembled the Death Star, a fictional doomsday device which had enthralled much of pirate fleet ever since one of Tenchi's lieutenants caught The Prince watching an old Earth movie dubbed, "_Star Wars." _What a wonderful idea it was for a space station! Entire worlds and civilizations could be held hostage by that kind of power!

Incredibly, it had become the center of attention for a certain amount of pop culture aboard the underworld of Hades Station. Constant talk circulated about renovating the old floating city into such a horrific weapon.

Of course, eventually this had led to Washu being drawn into the discussion, too. And just as predictably the diminutive scientist had declined to help the pirates achieve such a transformation; Hades Station already had an evil reputation on par with the Death Star, after all… and Washu had expressed her reluctance to help "the incorrigibles" build anything even _potentially _destructive.

Delighting his minions, however, Tenchihad been able to retrofit a singularity cannon - replicated from Washu's blueprints of the Souja - onto the station's exterior himself without the scientist's help. He'd even been able to construct a much _larger _version of the cannon given the relative size of the station compared to his smaller pirate flagship. Now, the station did, indeed, have a planet destroying capability from the movie - although its range was far less than optimal in that regard. Specifically, the station would find itself destroyed by any explosion it caused.

So, Tenchi's minions still pestered Washu about helping them extend the cannon's range - especially when some obstinate planet refused to pay "protection" tithes. A few of the braver ruffians even petitioned Tenchi to coerce her into doing so. But secretly, Tenchi feared having _that_ kind of power… so he never forced her compliance.

Useful enough, the cannon proved highly effective in dissuading military attacks on the station - especially attacks instigated by Jurai's Royal Tree Ships, which had an uncanny ability to undermine his pirate operations all over the known universe, particularly when under the command of Seto, the so-called Devil Princess of Jurai.

Closing the distance, Souja finally approached its docking chamber and Tenchi found himself wishing that Hades Station really was more like the Death Star. The filthy interior never failed to hammer into his mind that the station was nothing at all like its movie counterpart. For instance, absent were the clinically-clean, white corridors which storm troopers had marched through. Instead, vast 'open' spaces clogged the interior of Hades Station, which housed terrestrial-equivalent copies of cities. Miles high, the habitation domes were packed full of buildings, roads, vehicles, and endless neon signs. And it was all as dirty and seedy as it could possibly be.

Still… it wasn't without remnants of beauty. Just as Planet Jurai kept bragging so openly about its technological advancements - which sported an 'au naturel' aesthetic - so too had this station once flaunted its opulence with flashy displays of light and color on a truly epic scale. But it was all gone now; the clean chrome panels and innocent billboards had been replaced with rust, garbage, and strip clubs. Centuries ago, fire and brimstone had fallen from on high to punish the city - but unlike the Saddam and Gammoragh of old, God had not destroyed Hades Station, but instead cursed it with a kind of living death.

A pirate couldn't ask for a better haven.

Souja touched down; the click of magnetic landing gear locked into place. A sharp jolt shook the ship, knocking a few rookies off their feet like it always did - and also delighting the pirates who placed the correct bets as to which of the "docking virgins" would take a tumble - but the ship itself was unharmed. The men left unusually fast this time. But Tenchi knew why it was so… they'd all been giving him unusually fearful glances throughout the entirety of the journey. Having a ruthless demigod for a master had put a little fear into their black hearts… especially if that ruthless demigod was having sociopathic mental issues that might just kill everyone on board.

_Oh, but if they only knew__…_

Tenchi stood up from his throne only after they had all departed his presence; he tentatively laid down his admiral's cap on the throne. The silly looking hat even had the 'skull and crossbones' sown into the front, which was the result of his criminals having adopted Earth's pirate regalia in order to honor their Prince's origins. It looked a bit ridiculous… but somehow it felt good, too. He wondered, 'Could any of his cutthroats' opinions have changed about following his leadership after his transformation? Could they trust New Kain? Or would they begin to mutiny against him?'

_Let them try! It will be fun to bring them back into line!__ Viciously, if necessary!_

Grimacing, Tenchi acknowledged that, for once, his despicable and utterly evil programming was speaking the truth to him: If his pirates mutinied then he'd just be ruthless until their 'change of mood' would get to be less negative. In fact, with his newfound powers, it couldn't possibly be all that difficult to bring them back to order if violence became necessary. Heck, maybe he could have even spared the Vestrans from being killed by the plummet of GP Headquarter's onto their planet's surface…

Regardless, Tenchi planned not to require the pirates' help much longer. So it really didn't matter much what they might think of him now. He could just proceed with his business as planned. Which reminded him… now he was scheduled to begin executing Plan B since he'd managed to survive his assimilation with Kain. Originally, Plan A had contained instructions for his pirates to disperse and take whatever loot they'd accumulated into hiding and retirement with them, taking advantage to disappear under all the chaos and warfare that Kain's release would have been sure to cause. Retirement would've ended the majority of the pirate threat in the universe that he'd created. Most critically, though, the plan had also contained specific instructions for a group of commandos to infiltrate a detention planetoid located near planet Jurai to free Ryoko from imprisonment.

It'd been Plan 'A' since he honestly hadn't expected his mission to be a success - a thought which brought him even more guilt when he considered how many lives he'd sacrificed to engage in an unlikely-to-win gamble. But he took solace in the fact that he'd been willing to forsake his own life, too. How many pirate captains swallowed their superiority complexes and forsook their positions of power to actually place themselves in the middle of the danger with the men? He did. And that was a big part of what made him their Prince.

Alone, he disembarked the Souja, smiling at the immense docking bay that was part of his kingdom. None of his subjects were present to greet him. The Prince of Pirates just marched forward through the dank, dripping corridors which separated the docks from the interior habitation domes. But as he arrived at the panel switch that was used to operate the door for entry into the interior of Hades Station… he encountered an unexpected problem: he no longer had a cyber brain.

It was standard procedure for Galactic Union citizens - and their less than lawful cousins, the pirates. Advanced microprocessors and telecommunications gear was gradually installed into the brain over the course of childhood. By the time adulthood arrived, the brain was a cyborg inside of an organic skull. For more advanced users, full "techno hoods" were installed over the brain which allowed for more complicated tasks to be fulfilled like remote controlling droids, complete virtual reality, engaging in mind hacks, or even breaking down protective military-grade firewalls. Courtesy of Washu's medical technology, Tenchi's cyber brain had been extremely advanced prior to his integration with Kain.

But now he couldn't even open this darned door!

Tenchi stared at the unopened portal for no less than two minutes trying to figure out what to do about the problem, contemplating his options, unable to communicate with the circuitry inside the door and unable to find a manual override lever! He didn't want to wreck it - even though it was an old, cheap door. He wished it really was more like _Star Wars_! The blasted thing wasn't even equipped with any voice recognition technology or other amenities that better designs incorporated. Maybe he _should_ just wreck it…?

Eventually, he summoned the holo-top and programmed it to simulate an "open door" command.

The centuries-old door retracted. Tenchi strode through it, at last, grumbling to himself - and wondering how Ryoko had ever managed to get along in life without a cyber brain. Washu had once explained to him that the silver-haired space pirate was some sort of an old bio-weapons project. Her immune system had rejected all attempts to integrate with a cyber brain. Apparently, Kain had been built the same way… although Ryoko at least had the ability to teleport and phase through solid matter. Kain didn't possess those traits, he knew. It would require some coping, he realized… he would become much better acquainted with the holo-top as time progressed.

But still, the costs of losing his cyber brain were massively outweighed by the incredible benefits of acquiring Kain's god-like shields and firepower. The memories locked inside his arcane brain recalled exactly how much destructive and damage resistant potential he now possessed - he could even go toe-to-toe with a Royal Tree Ship and win the battle! Not shabby at all for a human sized combatant!

In fact, Kain's last memory - aside from losing his body to the Prince of Pirates - had him engaged in life and death combat above a dying red-giant star with no fewer than _three_ Royal Tree Ships as his opponents.

Toward the end, Kain cast one of the pretentious Jurain battleships down into the fiery inferno and had nearly succeeded in demolishing the other two when an entire armada of GP arrived on scene. Tenchi winced, as though the memory were his own. He remembered boarding one of the Tree Ships to take a hostage. But Kain had gotten much more than he bargained for! The King of Jurai himself was sitting atop the ship's command throne. But seeing all the dead ensmen littered all over the grassy deck, Kain had gotten cocky, too sure of victory, and challenged the Master of Jurai to personal combat.

_What cosmic luck! Wasn't it? __What else could it have been for us! What better hostage than the King of Jurai! But… oh… we were wrong to fight him that day._

Obviously, Kain lost: He wouldn't have been in the GP Headquarters' prison cell otherwise. He'd severely underestimated the King's Jurain power; it'd been a literal clash of the titans aboard that ship. Worse, the battle had gone awry for Kain from the start. Kain had even tried to absorb his hated enemy, but found the King's energy sword impaled in his left eye socket seconds before the King's flesh connected with his shadows. Everything went black after that - but Tenchi felt some satisfaction later knowing that the King had died from his exertions. So in the end, even tired and wounded from battling _three _Jurain battleships, he'd managed to put the King of Jurai to death! Oops… he meant that _Kain _had managed to put the King of Jurai to death. Filtering out his darker half was getting harder…

_Yes… our__ power is awesome! And we will face the King of Jurai again! We must exterminate life in Jurai's galaxy!_

Tenchi swatted his own head - briefly reminding himself to just blow up the King's ship next time - and then he gazed out at the immense habitation domes of Hades Station. Oh, it'd once been so beautiful here - the old historical vids had showed him once how the station looked centuries ago. Like a paradise. But now, even though the station was every bit as well lit and bright as it was before, gone were the beautiful white and blue lights - replaced with sensuous red and pink neon. For miles above, the sky was like a waterfall of sinful radiance that crashed down upon spectators and swallowed them whole. Indeed, Hades Station was infamous around the universe as an easy place to lose your soul if you weren't careful. More than a few innocents had lost their lives here, too.

Hover cars flew through the air, pedestrians scuttled down roads on foot, droids clanked or rolled wherever, and the dancing lights mesmerized all of them. It looked a lot like the world he'd seen in the movie "Blade Runner" as a child. Again, it was a considerably darker visage than "Star Wars." For instance, the huge masses of people were crushing themselves together amidst a swirl of technologies that were both ancient and cutting edge. The combination made the city look almost like a hodge-podge of luxury and shanty-town. Most being poor. Indeed, most of Hades Station looked a lot like a mildly futuristic, impoverished equivalent of an ultra-populated city from Earth. Heck, it could've even been Tokyo… or downtown Harbin.

Reluctant as usual, Tenchi marched straight forward into the abyss of lights, sex, booze and violence. He never liked coming here, but the damnable place had its perks. Most important among those perks was that it fostered an environment that his pirate minions adored, making them all much easier to control than they'd been at the beginning of his war thirty years ago. Other big perks involved the many "ship stripping" operations that thrived here for spacecraft thieves and hijackers. The facilities used by those particular brands of criminals made the occasional renovating and repair of his pirate fleets uncomplicated.

Shaking the memories from his head, and ready to begin the next phase of his war, or "Plan B," Tenchi went in search of the one woman who could help him. And there was only one place the little scientist could be:

The "Crabs" Bar was located less than a mile from where the Souja was docked. It was Washu's hideout… or at least the vast underground network of tunnels and infrastructure below it was her hideout, rather. Or maybe it would be even more accurate to call the place her prison. Tenchi honestly didn't know what the poor red-headed scientist thought of her new lab and living quarters these days. Regardless, she had nothing to do with the bar/bordello sitting on street level above her. The name of the establishment was merely a joke given the eccentric logo that Washu often stamped her merchandise with and the smutty parasite that patrons of the bar were often infected by. The bar merely contained the elevator shaft to the scientist's lab.

As usual, Tenchi particularly disliked entering this establishment - but it was necessary to reach Washu. Today, gratefully, none of the prostitutes were interested in coddling him as he strode into the bar toward the elevator. In fact, no one approached him at all, which was strange, given that his commanders and close subordinates frequented this place. Word of his integration with Kain must have already reached the staff and clientele - along with strong talk about their Prince suffering a split personality disorder. Or maybe they just noticed his unusual appearance.

_Do they know already? Then l__et's show them! Let them all see how powerful we've become! We can start our task of annihilation with them!_

Silence. None of them dared to provoke the wrath of Kain. Quiet hopefuls even prayed to forgotten gods that Tenchi, their Prince, was truly the being in control of the walking arsenal in front of them. Not Kain… please, oh Goddess Tsunami, not Kain! Nobody even had the guts to speak to the pirate leader; although the isolation didn't bother Tenchi very much. He was more than used to inspiring fear and intimidation in those around him - heck, he couldn't have become the Prince of Pirates otherwise! Still, it _did _seem odd that none of his lieutenants or other high ranking officers had greeted him. Oh well…

_We plan__ on getting rid of them soon anyway… let's just kill them now while their weak and distracted!_

Managing to reach the elevator shaft without instigating any violence or murder, Tenchi summoned his holo-top and opened the door. He sighed, again cursing his lack of a cyber brain. Well, it was time to go face Washu yet again. The thought made him wince harder… especially after he stopped to consider all that he'd committed against her over the course of the last thirty years. The truth serum incident alone, when he'd questioned her about Kain, was easily enough to have turned her against him. Did she hate him?

Stepping inside the elevator bravely, he just let his fingers dance over the phantom-like keyboard, issuing a message to Washu, telling her that he'd arrived home and was requesting information as to which level he should meet her on. The response was immediate.

"Hey! Numb Skull! I've been sitting over here the whole time! Didn't you see me?" shouted a nasally voice. Tenchi whirled around. His black eyes scanned the interior of the bar; had Washu really come up here? It would be strange behavior for her. The little scientist came out of her lab about as often as a hibernating bear comes out of its cave in the winter. In fact she'd never really come up here into the bar at all, not once that he could remember at least.

Exiting the elevator, he honed in on the source of her voice. And sure enough, there she was, sitting in a corner booth alone sipping an extremely alcoholic drink. Dried tears had left behind little trails on her face.

_She'd been __crying…_

Washu just stared straight at him - locking her moist eyes with his cold black orbs. Then she scanned him from head to toe taking in the other horrifying distortions that his body had undergone since she'd last seen him.

_Be careful… she's dangerous._

Finally, she teased him, "You're getting sloppy, eh, Tenchi? I'm surprised. With all the senses that new body of yours is packed with, you should've been able to sniff me out quicker than a bloodhound on limburger cheese!" Abruptly, her voice turned a bit sour, "But, then again, you never were very observant when it came to us ladies, now were you..."

_What! __Does she mock us! Let's start our work by exterminating her!_

"Please… forgive… forgive my shortcomings, Washu." Tenchi leaned down on his forehead, massaging his temples as if he were having a headache. His voice was thick and raspy. Kain threatened to get the better of him in front of the scientist. "I've been a monster lately. But I need your help again for the next phase of the war. I hope that you can stomach helping the Prince of Pirates again."

God! He even sounded different! Inwardly, Washu winced at his new voice… which rumbled so much deeper and _far _more sinister than his old timbre. He sounded like a wolf with a silk voice. She frowned at this new creature bitterly, wondering where Tenchi had gone; there was no telling how much pain his transformation was costing her heart. Couldn't he see the tears on her face? Hadn't he seen them before he left on his insane quest? Or had he always just ignored her pain?

Tenchi opened his mouth to say something else – probably more apologies to goad her into compliance with his schemes – but instead he started rubbing his temples again. And that troubled Washu, despite how negative their 'relationship' might have become; since when did Tenchi have headaches? She handled most of his medical care personally, and there was never any indication of migraines or other serious problems. And she highly doubted that Kain was susceptible to such trivial ailments. So, Washu surmised that the integration must still be underway… and that he was fighting it? Concerned despite her wishes not to be, Washu placed a palm against his head on instinct - an action she quickly realized was utterly useless considering she had no inkling at the nature of Kain's homeostasis patterns.

Also, she knew it was dangerous just to touch him…

But still, she had to know if he was worth saving… or else she'd have to do what had to be done. Retracting her arm carefully, and grumbling to hide her nervousness, she placed her hands on her hips and said, "Tenchi, why don't you come on down to my lab for a quick scan and then we can discuss this more afterward? You don't look so good right now. Besides, I've always wanted to stick a sensor or two on a creature as powerful as Kain."

_Destroy her before she causes trouble!_

Washu braced for impact, but still looked at him with utter sincerity in her eyes; she wanted to help him. But all the others stuck in the bar with them didn't act nearly so welcoming as her. In fact, clientele and staff were already beginning to abandon the building on masse. The exodus was silent; but within a few minutes, everyone had escaped out onto the street. In short order, New Kain and Washu were the only occupants left in the Crabs Bar - along with a few robotic server droids that still operated behind the counter.

_Well… it's worse than we thought… I guess we'll have to do something to__ stay in charge after all. Those people shouldn't be running from their leader… not yet, at least._

Stony and poker faced as ever, Washu managed to keep her face neutral. She even offered to help him again, but still didn't reveal her shock at how much Tenchi's voice had changed alongside the distortion of his new obsidian black body. But then again, she'd expected it. She'd warned him. In fact, she already felt pretty confident that Tenchi wasn't even the same man anymore who'd led his army against GP Headquarters just a few hours ago. But she just had to make sure of it… before she started the next phase of her own little plan.

Still… it was hopeless task, and she knew it. "Tenchi are you coming down with me or not?"

Briefly, as Tenchi considered her invitation, Washu evaluated the pirates' hypothesis. Split personality? No, that didn't seem correct at all. That diagnosis hardly seemed a good fit for the situation, even though it was attractive since it implied that Tenchi could yet be saved. Instead, more than likely, the integration of the two warriors just wasn't quite done yet. Just like she'd theorized a month ago. So, unfortunately, gone was her handsome Tenchi and his soft tenor voice… replaced by this rich, almost erotic baritone that reminded her of the Phantom of the Opera. And it wasn't going to get better, only worse as the integration progressed further to claim him body and soul.

When the white mask stretched against his face like a second skin, smiling at her, shaking his head to decline her offer, it accentuated the phantom's resemblance and she even wondered just how much his soul had changed, too. For instance, he'd never been a good liar, but could he be now?

Washu wept on the inside; just a cursory glance at him should've been enough to convince her all had gone awry. Just like she'd known it would… and had warned him. Was it still possible for her to gauge his sincerity the old fashioned way, or had Kain's evil made him completely unpredictable? Could she still judge him properly to prevent excessive violence? Predict what was going on in his head?

Was he still the Prince of Pirates?

_Why doesn't she smile back__ at us? Are we that horrible? Hah! Maybe we can kill her with only our looks!_

For a time, Washu struggled to answer her dilemma - but then she steeled herself and remembered what kind of horrors Kain was programmed to commit. She'd been there - though only a child at the time - at the moment of the bio droid's creation. He was a weapon of genocide… and it took only a moment of staring into his utterly alien eyes to know the answer: No, she definitely couldn't trust him anymore.

Pained, Washu realized with finality that the time had come to put in motion her own scheme. What else could she do! Heck, even his _manner of speaking_ had been altered with his integration with Kane! What was left of him? Tenchi was dead! Oh, how she'd tried to dissuade him from his crazy plan! And now it looked like she'd been proven right! No wonder his subordinates were all acting so alarmed of him all of the sudden! You could feel it in the air!

_What's going on? Why is she looking at us like that?__ We must strike before she does something dangerous!_

Cleverly, as a distraction, Washu harrumphed at the killer war machine standing in front of her. Kain frowned back. Washu paused. Hmmm, she thought, maybe she could appear too emotionally unstable to be a threat to him? Throw him off guard? Of course, it was possible that she really was that upset… so maybe it wouldn't be an act.

"Really?" she growled, "You say you're sorry for what you've done, huh? Sorry for _what_ exactly, Tenchi? Be specific. Are you sorry for having been a lying, sociopathic murderer who turned on his friends?"

The ruse worked; Kain's black eyes just gave her an exasperated look.

"Oh, come on, Washu. Isn't it obvious?" his nose puffed like an annoyed bull. "Fine, for starters, then, I'm sorry that I've been an evil son-of-a-bitch for the last thirty years. For robbing your technology from you; for betraying your trust as a student; and for being a terrible host to you back on Earth. Every day I wish that I could have found a better way…" he declared. His voice held true apology, but there was very little regret in his tone. "…but it doesn't change the facts: I require your help again or a lot of innocent people are going to die, Washu. And a lot of people who have already died will have died for nothing. That can't happen. So please help me."

Washu smirked at him again; now he was sounding a bit more like the Tenchi she knew. She'd expect no other choice of words from the Prince of Pirates, either; he'd gotten straight down to business, didn't apologize for what he didn't regret, and of course refrained from any shred of intimacy between them. So maybe he wasn't so different from the original Tenchi after all? Well, it didn't really matter… she had already made her choice. And there wasn't any time for indecision.

Secretly, her cyber brain sent commands to the machinery down in her lab - telling it to fire up the teleportation nodes and warm up the force field generators.

Leering at him, "Apology _not_ accepted," she growled. "But something tells me that I don't really have much of a choice about helping you again, do I? You've probably got more of that 'truth juice' hidden around here someplace in case I don't cooperate with you again. I'm right, aren't I?"

Kain smirked back at her. "That's an accurate assessment, professor," Tenchi nodded his head at her unhappily. "Congratulations, you've figured me out again… and 'no' you really _don't_ have much of a choice in the matter. But that doesn't mean I'm not sorry about it."

Washu frowned at him. "Well, you're pretty much endorsing slave labor then, Tenchi. Even if you're 'sorry' about it! So much for the nobility of your cause, huh! Hurting me like this is just a little bit low even for you, right? I helped you of my own accord for three decades, don't forget… and overlooked a million grievances during that time. Don't I deserve a little more consideration than an injection when I don't behave? I refused to help you join Kain for a good reason! So don't give me this bullshit about being sorry!"

Suddenly, with a motion that was supernaturally swift, Tenchi leaned in very close to Washu. Almost nose to nose, his mask regarded her with a strange look; and his black eyes made it impossible for her to read his emotions with any precision… but the dark god radiated a sense of melancholy that even the scientist could feel.

"Washu," he declared, "I'm just hoping that you'll believe me. If not… well, then there's nothing I can do to fix it. Sorry. But you should realize that it would be unforgivably irresponsible of me to let my fleet's one advantage - _you _- slip away from us at a time like this, which would subsequently doom all of the worlds that are depending on my pirates to be stripped of technology by the GU. We would lose the war! So I have no choice! You're mature enough to realize that, right? You're certainly old enough to get it."

"Mature!" cried Washu, too focused on that issue to even register the age remark. "You think it's a matter of maturity to sit back and let myself be enslaved by you!"

Holding up his hands, "No," Tenchi moved to calm her. "I don't think that at all. It would be stupid to think that! In fact, it only makes sense for you to be angry with me because you've lost your freedom at my hands. But I also think that it's a matter of maturity for you not to be angry with me because of my stance. Blame me for your suffering, Washu - but don't blame me for doing what must be done."

Washu pursed her lips; her temperature rose; the skin on her face even flushed bright crimson red. The color of her face darkened to match the color of her hair. For a moment, her concentration even broke. Doing something that would've panicked the Crab's Bar employees had they been there to witness it, Washu actually popped upright and punched Tenchi hard across the jaw. The blow chiseled a look of shock and surprised upon his mask. It almost activated his murder programming. But instead, whistling his appreciation, Tenchi merely sat down in the chair opposite her with a plop.

"I didn't expect that…" he admitted. "But I probably should have realized it was coming."

Unfinished with him, Washu jumped up on top of the table that now sat between them and straddled his waist; she screamed into his face, "This war was every bit mine as yours, you stupid man! Do you honestly think that you hacked my databases and stole my technology by yourself all those years ago! No you didn't! I _let _you get away with all of it! I've supported you these entire thirty years! Me! I did it because I loved you and wanted to help!"

Tenchi said nothing; he just looked sad.

Washu slapped him hard on the cheek; the blow echoed throughout the Crabs Bar. She even spit in his face, holding back tears. "…And how do you repay me when I raise concerns about a plan of yours! Do you thank me? Tell me that you disagree? No! You just pump me full of truth serums and force my compliance without a word! How could you do that to me! I was trying to protect you - don't you know how stupid it was to try to assimilate with Kain! There's no winning that kind of mission, Tenchi! You either die in the attempt or you die when you 'achieve' having your soul split apart and rebuilt into something else! You're a monster now, Tenchi, can't you see that!"

"Yes!" he nodded, "But we needed Kain! I was going to lose this war, Washu… my pirates can't hold against Lady Seto forever. We've been losing ground!"

"Then you should have admitted defeat," cried Washu, "…and come home to Earth with me. I could have protected you from the authorities… and believe it or not, all of us other girls wanted to have you back, too."

Frowning, "What?" Pure confusion twisted up New Kain's mask. He pried further, "What do you mean by that, Washu? Have you been in contact with the others? Ayeka? Sasami? What about Ryoko? How can you possibly know what they want? Have you been talking to all of them?" Then, after a brief pause, his face grew even sadder. "And what do you mean _wanted _to have me back?Have I become so disgusting that _none _of them want anything to do with me anymore?"

Washu went utterly silent. Rising from Tenchi's lap, she paced a few steps away, and then turned around to face him. There was something cold about her eyes now - and it startled Tenchi to realize just how much her expression seemed to resemble his own after he'd begun his war mongering thirty years ago. It was a brutal expression on a gentle face… something that had no business existing.

_What's happening!__ She's going to attack us! Kill her now! Do what we are programmed to do!_

Tenchi locked out his urges, fighting against a genocide program written millennia ago. But he still braced himself for betrayal from Washu…

"Why don't you ask them for yourself, Tenchi? I'm sure they'd be happy to tell you themselves," she uttered.

Suddenly, New Kain gawked at her. "Huh? What do you mean? What do you mean ask them for myself? Can you raise them on communications? How can you do that? Jurai has been jamming our comms for years now!"

Shaking her head, Washu activated her holo-top and keyed in a series of commands… and immediately there was a shimmer in the room as a force field activated. This was bad!

At once, New Kain's hair stood on end in alarm and his mask hardened into a vicious look of resolve. He didn't want to hurt Washu… but he would do what he was programmed to do. Furthermore, he couldn't just abandon his cause to the lower-class worlds, either. They'd fall without him.

Still, the situation was very odd for a double-cross; it confused Tenchi as to why she'd trapped herself inside with him. "What are you doing, Washu?" he asked her.

"You'll just have to wait and see, Tenchi," Washu remonstrated, "I'm afraid there's something that the six of us girls have needed to do for a long, long time now… and it's going to take _all_ of us to do it. You've become quite a big boy over the last thirty years and just one of us girls isn't quite enough to handle you anymore…"

Tenchi leapt to his feet; he fired a warning shot straight over the scientist's head - a spike of dark energy. Untold power radiated off his body in waves as his fight-or-flight mechanisms kicked his body into combat mode. What the heck was she talking about! It _was _a betrayal after all! To his horror, he felt the identity of Kain surfacing to take violent control over his thoughts. Bloodlust started to creep in, and he was tempted to smite Washu on the spot before she could cause him any trouble. Incredibly, the force field wavered from his energy spike.

Trembling, Washu backed away.

_Kill her now! Kill her now! Kill her now!_

"What are you doing, Washu!" Tenchi demanded, grabbing his forehead one last time to quell the murderous thoughts that might hurt his friend. But when he looked back up at her again, the look in his eyes had become so vicious that it melted any confidence the diminutive scientist formerly held about his letting her defeat him; facing down the murderous god in all his brutal majesty had always caused his enemies to become much less sure of their plans than beforehand - and now same was true of Washu, who'd grossly miscalculated how much power Kain possessed. And how willing the dark god was to kill.

He barked one last time at her in grim warning, "And who the hell is 'we' and how many people have you got in here! What are you planning do, Washu! Answer me now!"

Terrified, Washu screamed at him. "Or what, Tenchi! You'll kill me! Would you really kill _me!_"

Like an orgasm of wicked desire, Kain's programming clawed its way to the surface with all its madness and malicious intent. Utterly evil, the power in the room doubled and a smirk rippled across Kain's mask.

"I don't _have _to kill you, Washu!" he hissed, "Instead, I'll just rip your limbs off if you don't tell me! I swear to God I'll make you suffer so much! Tell me now or by the time I get done with you, you'll be begging me to kill you!"

Washu's eyes bulged in disbelief. A great sob erupted from her throat and she sank to her knees. Weeping like a little girl, Washu activated and typed in a final series of commands into her holo-top, and then spun the monitor around to give Tenchi a good look at the picture she'd displayed on the screen; she turned her head away to keep a little dignity.

It was a letter. One written from all six of the precious women who'd invaded his life thirty-five years ago. The letter had been written and dated barely a month prior to this little showdown here with Washu in the Crab's Bar. In fact, it'd been written almost the very day that he'd begun his preparation to capture Kain… and began pumping Washu full of truth serums and drugs that'd reduced her to little more than a gibbering servitor for a month. The letter had been written by Ayeka, Sasami, Ryoko, Mihoshi, Kyoni, and even Washu.

_Oh my God…_

Tenchi's black eyes scanned the words, making Kane disappear underneath the strain of reading just a few lines of the letter; he felt black tears spill down his face. Opposite him, drying her own tears for the millionth time in thirty years, Washu sneered at him. She even dared to read out loud a few lines - lines that promised to take him home and love him despite what he'd done.

"…we just want you back, Tenchi," she finished reading the last line of the letter to him.

Eventually, Washu looked up from the screen. "Can't you see! We were trying to bring you home, Tenchi! To be _with _us again! But you wouldn't listen to me! You wouldn't even stop to hear what I had to say!" At last, she spun the laptop back around and smashed her fist down on her keyboard's equivalent of the 'enter' key. The phantom computer blared red with warning lights. Immediately, the air began to shimmer behind the scientist, and then almost a dozen rods of light erupted into real space just behind her.

"I've been trying to find a way to bring you back to your senses ever since it became apparent to me you'd do something crazy to win this war! I couldn't believe my ears when you talked about merging with Kain! I wanted to die! All of us girls loved you so much, you idiotic man! But look what you've done! Now there's only one way left to us to stop you!"

Finally, the light rods faded… and in their place were the people that Tenchi still loved more than anything else: all six girls who'd fallen into his life and enriched it beyond imagination. He blanched openly at their combined presence… and at the looks on their faces, which put nails right through his heart: Not a single one of them looked pleased to see him at all anymore - least of all Mihoshi and Kiyoni. His atrocities had finally disgusted his lovers to the point of hatred.

"Ohaiyo, Tenchi," they all greeted him in somber tones. Even Ryoko… his fellow pirate. The one who'd been most instrumental in his rise to supremacy over the pirate guilds. Tenchi's eyes raked over them one by one:

Ryoko wore her red and black combat suit, heavily plated and laden with armor - liberated from the prison she must have escaped. Of course, she wielded no weapons, having absolutely no need for them.

Ayeka stood solid and regal, a truly terrifying queen of ice when it came to matters of war. And the expression on her face now couldn't possibly be any more cold. Her Jurain shield sizzled in the air with her fury.

Sasami wore a look of anger that was completely alien on the gentle princess's face. The swirl of Juraian energy boiling around her contrasted her sweet personality.

Kiyoni was calm and collected. Only a slight inward bent of her eyebrows hinted at her thoughts. She'd always been an incredible agent – one of the GP's best. Weapons and gear clung to her shapely frame.

Mihoshi looked downright wild; her unique personality had always manifested itself in extreme displays of emotion, which sometimes overloaded her common sense. And for the first time, it looked like she wanted to kill. She was outfitted the same as her partner standing next to her.

Finally, Tenchi's attention centered back on Washu, his advisor, the woman whom he'd been able to rely on for support and assistance for more than thirty years.

Unable to hold in her sobbing, Washu retrieved a small singularity pistol from beneath her smock. "We've come to stop you, Tenchi. I'm so sorry! We believed in your cause… in fact, we all intervened for you on countless occasions. Countless battles! But now the war can't succeed anymore… and we certainly can't let you go. You're not Tenchi. Now I'm convinced you're just a reincarnation of that damned monster, Kain… even if you don't realize it yourself yet."


	4. The Merging

**I don't own Tenchi, Ghost ****in the Shell cyber brains, or any of the song lyrics that appear in these fictions.**

**The Merging**

Fireballs ignited in the sky over Harbin. Soaring over the city at night, they were wreathed in an odd, golden light that shimmered around them like halos. Also, unlike the first time, Tenchi hadn't stumbled into traffic like before, which was good since it was nighttime and drivers were less likely to spot him as before. Gawking at the sky, he still caused passersby's to give him the same queer looks.

Just how many spy planes were going to be crashing down on China? He cringed: _Many_ fireballs blazed in the sky tonight as compared to only two a week ago; in fact, one giant ball of fire burning at the center was circled by many smaller ones, like a planetoid with moons revolving around it.

Briefly, Tenchi wondered if it was doomsday… and those comets weren't really spy planes, after all, but comets that would destroy the Earth.

The UFO's rocketed in, revealing themselves to all the frightened citizens again with a thunderous overture - just the same way as the last incident - and Tenchi let out his breath upon seeing that the biggest comet wasn't an immense planet-killer as suspected. Although… _none_ of the comets looked much like spy planes, either…

Explosions. Sonic booms. Glass everywhere. It almost _did _seem like the end of the world. Although the comets were several scales smaller than necessary to wreck the planet's ecology, the biggest comet at the center was still huge, and the smaller ones around it must've been as large as city busses. The celestial air bombs flew in so low and fast that the sonic booms exploded glass overhead.

"Aaahhh!" shrieked men and women; "Whoa, shit!" barked Tenchi. It was all happening again!

Hazardous shards of glass rained on Harbin for the second time; pedestrians crouched while Tenchi stood and estimated where the comets would land. In fact, he would've gone out to flag down a taxi to pursue the anomalies just like the last time, but the marks of being interrogated by the government over the last incident still clung to his body. The Chinese hadn't _hurt _him, of course, but the experience hadn't been pleasant, either. So this time he decided that getting mixed up in the spy plane business wasn't going to happen again. Especially since it looked like the comets were heading towards the nearby town of Hulan again… which hardly seemed a coincidence.

Tenchi crawled home that night content that he'd smothered his curiosity. Surely, it didn't matter how interesting the event was… or how likely it could be related to the silver haired pilot whom his interrogators claimed vanished from the hospital a few days ago. So he went to bed, completely oblivious to what was going to happen to him next…

Gaagh! Tenchi awakened in panic – kicking his murder programming out of control of his body. The damn codes had put him to sleep somehow! It'd even sent him back into the past he so loved! Now, seizing the steering wheel again, he regarded the sad story in front of him with a pang in his heart; it was the conflict he'd left behind:

"Please don't make us do this…" begged Ryoko.

"Don't resist arrest," ordered Kiyone.

Tenchi craved to be one of the casualties of this tragic battle - but he couldn't allow it. Instead, he would have to be the unhappy survivor. Too many people would have died for absolutely nothing. He couldn't let those deaths be meaningless. Unfortunately, winning this battle might stain his hands with some very precious blood. And he would _never_ be able tomake sense of it all - not if he had a million years to be alone with his thoughts… which he probably would, given Kain's immortal lifespan.

"I'm so sorry, Tenchi…" sniffled Washu.

"Please don't resist, Tenchi!" Sasami's voice warbled.

Oh God. There they all were - his family - standing opposite him in the seedy Crabs Bar, ready to dance the macabre, perverse dance that's footsteps echoed with the sounds of artillery and explosions all over the known universe. "Lover against lover," would be the title of the song; no finer dedication could be wrought to the horrors of war. What better way to praise evil than to take something as pure as the love between two (or six) people and torture it until there was nothing left but hate, bloodshed, and a river of tears - all in the name of defending an ideal.

Was destroying the NI Policy really worth this? _No, of course not. But killing them all certainly is! We were meant to destroy all life!_

"Don't make me hurt you…" Tenchi pleaded with the women he loved, shutting out the noisy programming. Still, his voice kept a strong, taunting edge, unwilling to back down from them - not even for his precious family. Kain, especially, snarled with revulsion at the mere notion of showing weakness in front of an enemy... even an enemy that Tenchi loved.

Finally, it was Princess Ayeka who dared to step forward and confront the dark god; the other girls parted for her advance, but kept their eyes locked with the creature whom they'd all once loved as a man. God, Ayeka looked beautiful to Tenchi. It'd been too long since he'd last seen her. But then, every bit as proud and brave as the Crown Princess of Jurai should be, Ayeka spoke words that chilled Tenchi's heart to the core with their formality and coldness:

"Lord Tenchi Masaki, the so-called Prince of Pirates, I, First Crown Princess Ayeka Jurai, order you to lay down your arms and submit to the ruling authority of Planet Jurai! Surrender yourself to the mercy of our courts at once or face lethal coercion! What do you have to say for yourself!"

Nobody-not even Tenchi-expected his own answer.

Driven by his killer programming, Kain fired a purple bolt of lightning straight at Ayeka's head as his only response. The princess' eyes dropped open in shock and fear as the radiant lance of energy vaporized the shield guarding her face. Scorched air penetrated through, kissing Ayeka with violent heat. Indeed, none of the girls had yet expected Tenchi to attack any of them…

"No!" a scream tore out of Tenchi's throat, even as a second spike of energy departed his shadow flesh again. But it was too late to recall the attack. Inside, Kain laughed.

Thankfully, Ayeka's shields rose again just in time; tiny floating shield generators protected Ayeka just a nanosecond before the killer strike could extinguish her life. But still, the sheer power delivered in Kain's attack was too immense; his blow hammered her shield back like a professional wrestler punching into an adolescent girl's face.

The sickening crack of vertebrae echoed in the air. Ayeka's head whipped backward at an unnatural angle; she rag-dolled across the ground as the other girls scuttled to aid her or - in Ryoko's more combative method - took up a defensive posture in front of her to defend against another attack.

Transfixed with horror, Tenchi spotted a halo of blood forming around Ayeka's bleeding head. But all of the girls standing around the fallen princess remained calm - even as she bled out upon the ground - unbroken by such an incredible display of strength: a deific strength that'd crushed battleships and ended millions of lives in the past.

"Stay back, Tenchi!" Ryoko ordered him - her voice deadly and razor thin.

Tenchi hesitated - restraining any other 'instincts' that might cause him to strike again. Really, it was the horror of possibly having killed Ayeka that froze him. He felt like a man who'd stabbed himself through the heart with an ice cycle, or a ghost that suddenly realized he'd been dead for a long time after murdering everyone he held dear.

But then Ayeka got up.

Incredibly, the Crown Princess of Jurai was still conscious by some miracle - or was it a miracle of Washu's? The brave princess even managed to hold her wounded, bloodied head upright and take a step toward the dark god again. Intrigued, Kain could sense an army of nanomachines working to heal the princess's damaged spine - it was probably the same brand of nanites that Washu had once gifted him with to keep the Prince of Pirates alive through countless battles.

Narrowing black, soulless eyes at the women, Kain snarled at them, put his hands together, and flared a nuclear flash of light between his palms. "Don't provoke me again!"

At once, Kiyone stepped in front of the princess.

"Settle down, Tenchi! Haven't you caused enough damage to the universe? Killed enough people? Are you really going to hurt us now, too - the girls who all used to love you?" Kiyone stared right back into the monster's eyes. Her expression was grim and without warmth; it was a look reserved for missions that involved truly dangerous criminals… Never once had she worn that look at him, not even during battles between his pirates and her Galaxy Police.

New Kain grew even more emotionally unstable. Suddenly, lightning ripped open the ground at Kain's feet; the dark god released more energy - flexing his muscles - trying to make the women back down. Radiant with power, he became a nexus of energy standing in the middle of the room.

"Settle down?" Tenchi smirked, "Kiyone, I'll show you the seven circles of Hell before I even break a sweat!" Kain snarled one last time. "I haven't even begun! I will kill you if you don't back down - I'm afraid I don't have any choice…" he declared, tempted to strike at once.

_Eliminate them now! How hard can it possibly be! We've destroyed Jurain fleets in space! They're just six measly meatbags who think you still love them!_

"Stop it, Tenchi!" Mihoshi cried, cocking a powerful sidearm. "You used to be so nice! You were the best man I've ever met in my entire life! You even used to give me the last rice ball at dinner!"

Kain didn't hear. Power flared in the room; weapons clicked ready to fire; shields frizzled into existence; the tension in the room reached a fevered pitch.

Then, Sasami dissipated her Jurain power - not that her measly share of it could possibly do much damage to him anyway, Kain smirked - and stepped forward to confront him. "That's right! Listen to Mihoshi! You're the bravest, kindest man that any of us have ever met, Tenchi! So don't act this way right now; it's not you! Can't you see that! It's just that monster in your head!" And then the junior princess moved forward as if to embrace him.

Panicking, "Sasami, no!" cried each of the five female voices holding ground behind her. But the small princess arrived next to New Kain regardless of their cries. She wasn't killed on the spot as the others had feared; rather, the dark god regarded the small princess fondly - especially as tears of sadness spilled down her cheeks. Good old Sasami…

_Don't let her get close! It's a mistake!_

"Tenchi… please…" the princess cried - actually holding her hand out to him.

Tenchi faltered. What did the little princess want from him? What did she expect? Surely, none of these women could _really _expect him to just surrender his armies to Jurai, could they? Not after having waged a brutal campaign for three decades, sacrificing millions of lives, and even taking possession of the body of a genocidal god? Too much was at stake! He was at the cusp of victory now!

But… this was Sasami. Could he really turn his back on the little girl who used to cook him food? Clean his house? Brighten his day with her cheerfulness? No, he couldn't… he'd have to explain things to her:

"I can't give up, Sasami, I'm really sorry. Can't you see that? You always had more common sense than the rest of us. You should understand! But I promise that all of this horror is almost over with! Nobody - not even your father, King Azusa - will be able to stand against me soon. They'll have to obey me and repeal the NI Policy!"

The little princess drew closer to him.

_Tenchi! Stop her! She's got __a trick up her sleeve! She has something that we can't see yet!_

Ignoring Kain's noisy programming, Tenchi reached out for Sasami, gently taking the princess's hand and rubbing her fingers with his own. She gasped at his touch; his dark flesh was surprisingly cold on contact - much like the ice of space: frigid and without life. Fittingly, he felt every bit as cold as the betrayal that he'd wrought against these women. But not quite as cold as Sasami's betrayal…

Cold and hard, the needle sank into the side of Tenchi's brain, rammed in by the gentle princess who now wore a look of disdain upon her face. Before Kain could react, Sasami deposited a super lethal dose of flesh eating nanites into her lover's brain. Kain released a blast on reflex that hit the princess, vaporized her shield, and sent her streaking across the room like a bullet. The princess impacted the wall with enough force to break through it and rag-doll into the city outside. The force field let her pass.

"Sasami!" all of the women cried – and then they were upon him. Tenchi watched five of the most capable women in the universe descend upon him for vengeance. He vied to retain control of his body, to keep his programming in check, and to maintain consciousness.

But the nanites were eating his brain.

Would he survive? Tenchi didn't think so… because his life had begun to flash before his eyes again. The programming was taking control of his body. Again, the past overtook him; and it happened so fast that he completely forgot where he was or what battle he was fighting.

China didn't allow its citizens to possess firearms. So the apartment was 'relatively' defenseless. But Tenchi was very good with a knife - and also with the crossbow he'd bought from the darker skinned Chinese who often sold them on the side of the highways. So when the intruder broke into his house in the dead of night… Tenchi was ready for her.

The window opened - which indicated that the intruder was remarkably skilled given that he lived seven stories above the ground in a tall apartment building. Cracking an eye open, he remained still in his bed so as not to alarm the intruder. Just a little bit closer…

Eventually, the intruder's foot touched down on his nice wood floor, letting out only the faintest creak, so Tenchi tensed his muscles and prepared to lunge for the crossbow hidden in the closet.

Like a shot he burst out of bed for it. The intruder stiffened in surprise when the sleeping man suddenly burst out from under the covers - blasting the sheets up into the air to come down like parachutes - and rammed hard into the closet door across the room.

Recovery from the shock came a moment too late; before the intruder could close the distance between herself and the oddly attractive - though primitive - young man, there came an arrow streaking through the air at her.

"Ooh… shit…"

The arrow plunged into meat; the victim coughed up blood in perfect English, "I never… thought I'd get hit by… one of _these!" _she spat. The arrow had lodged itself through her jugular - poking out the back of her neck! Superhuman, she marched forward regardless at the crossbow-wielding young man who'd earlier "saved" her life.

Tenchi acted on instinct…

Heartbroken, the intruder wept in shock at what happened to her: Tenchi reversed directions and rammed hard into her stomach with something hard and sharp.

Tears ran down the intruders face; only a few of them came from the pain in her torn flesh; most came from the feeling of being betrayed by someone who'd shown her so much kindness only a few days ago. "Why did you do that?" she asked, but the words were too garbled from the blood in her throat to be understood clearly. Genuine confusion reflected in her yellow eyes.

Tenchi didn't listen but tackled the intruder back out through the window - intending to cast her back out to plummet to her death. He didn't think: training from old martial arts drills filtered into his subconscious.

But then, suddenly, the pale light of the city outside gave Tenchi his first clear glimpse of the intruder: it was the silver haired woman! He ceased his drive toward the window at once… but it was too late. The mystery woman's heels kicked up and she fell backward out of the window, trailing blood from twin wounds delivered by Tenchi's crossbow and the knife he'd buried up to the pommel in her belly.

"Why!" she gasped.

Tenchi stammered. "Wait… no!" Clawed fingers snatched at the tight fabric of the woman's clothes. But it was no use; she went through the window and sank fast toward the concrete ground below. He watched, eyes locked were hers, as the mortally wounded woman dropped floor by floor.

Crunch.

"Fuck!" he roared.

Unmoving, eyes wide, he stared at the ruined corpse splattered down on the ground. What in God's name just happened here! Time froze and more questions emerged: Why did she come through the window at him! She hadn't been carrying any weapons that he could see! And how the heck did she get all the way up here in the first place!

"Oh, no… no… no…" Tenchi repeated, throwing on sandals and scampering to unlock his front door, rampaging down the staircase floor-by-floor and throwing his weight into the security door at the bottom. A solid thud echoed on the outside; Tenchi's fingers discovered the lock, tripped it, and he burst into the outside panting.

Where was the woman! She wasn't there!

Wind blew. Dust whipped through the air, mingling with the barren splotch of blood where the woman had lain. The dust blew into Tenchi's agape mouth, too… and he wondered, 'How on earth could the woman have just disappeared!'

The next day, the clank of pumping weights hammered from a dozen places around the room. The gym floor, located on ZhongShan Road, was busy with back builders, bicep builders, leg builders, and builders of every other part of the body – all eagerly fine-tuning their bodies.

Tenchi was no exception, moving up and down with a heavy bar across the back of his neck. 160 kilograms - plus whatever the bar weighed – were piled atop his spine. Firm concentration looked back at him in the mirror as he completed his tenth rep and popped the bar back up onto the hanger. "Gah!" he grunted, rubbing the soreness out of his shoulders.

Folks were staring at him, of course: he was the largest person in the gym. Not _that _impressive, really, given that most Chinese bodybuilders didn't really try to bulk up, but it still felt good. Well, it _would _feel good once he managed to catch his breath… and maybe forget the woman.

Impossible…

People were still staring at him. Tenchi forced a smile and took it as a compliment. It was his standard reaction. And he would've kept smiling the whole day if it weren't for the woman who suddenly walked in through the doors…

"Ma de!" Tenchi gasped. Impossible! Spinning around to hide himself, which was useless given the jumbo-size mirror standing right in front of him - and also drew even more stares to himself - he debated whether to go greet her or escape. He still hadn't quite decided what she'd been trying to accomplish last night…

Suddenly, he felt himself being watched; the woman was looking at him through the mirror. She winked, spoke to the front attendant, and then returned her attention back to the man who'd "rescued" her a week ago. And killed her last night by shoving her out of a window. Offering the attendant a polite and friendly smile, the silver haired woman pointed in his direction and nodded towards him. The attendant nodded too - retrieving a few shoe pads for the woman to slip over her feet - and then sent her on her way over to Tenchi.

Each of the woman's footfalls rumbled with a note from "Concierto in D Minor" - or the theme music from the movie "Jaws" - until she finally reached him. Feeling she laid a long, heavy arm on his sore shoulders; Tenchi felt at once like the shark just bit a chunk out of him.

"Yikes!" he jumped.

Like a predator, she smiled at him and circled slowly to his front - the music played again in his mind as he caught sight of her unusually long canines. _All the better to eat me with, I'm sure. _She laughed; her shoulders bobbed up and down, straining her clothes in several places. She was certainly built like a hunter, too: strong and lean! "Settle down, sweetie pie!" she crooned, "I won't hurt you… too much."

Tenchi's foot crept backwards a step of its own volition. His mouth opened by itself, too… letting out an embarrassing trickle of saliva. As a result, the woman's grin stretched even wider: "Well, I'm used to having men drool when I come into a room – figuratively, of course – so it's sweet of you to make a girl feel so wanted!"

"You're dead…" was all he managed to reply.

She frowned, "Is that a statement or a threat? I'm certainly not dead - can't you see me standing here in front of you? I hope you're not stupid or blind."

"No… No… But… Who or _what _the heck are you? I saw you fall seven stories to the ground after being shot in the neck with an arrow. I think I also stabbed you!"

Covered in a thick shell of bravado, the woman smirked at the young man, gesturing at herself from head to toe. "Well, maybe you had a bad dream last night? If you're really not blind, then you can see I'm just a typical - although extremely _beautiful _- young lady! Why? Do you think I'm some kind of an alien or something?"

"I'm more inclined to believe in aliens than that I dreamt what happened last night!" he shouted.

Again, a dozen heads turned to stare at him. The rest were still busy gawking at the pretty young thing who'd come in to visit him. Were they having an argument? Even so, how could Tenchi dare shout at such a beauty!

"Hush down and listen to me," she told him a little more forcefully. "We don't have much time to wait-

"Yes we do!" Tenchi insisted. He back up a step and even grabbed a heavy metal pole for self-protection. "For all I know you were trying to kill me last night! I'll ask again: Who the heck are you and what do you want with me!"

Disappointment tugged at her eyes; suddenly, anger filled them a moment later - a switch that later experience would teach Tenchi to recognize as a sign that she was feeling hurt. "Maybe I just wanted to pay a visit to a nice man who tried to help me - it isn't often that I meet someone who bothers to take care of me," she snarled.

She turned to leave; Tenchi darted forward. "Wait! Wait! Please, don't go!" he called.

She looked back over her shoulder in a guarded, calculating posture that Tenchi recognized - it was reminiscent of how some of his friends from the dojo had tended to act. He feared that she was about ready to punch him.

"Look," he placated, "I was scared! Someone broke into my home - people tend to get _murdered _when that happens! I didn't want to hurt you!"

She narrowed her eyes. "And are you still scared now?"

Truthfully, "Yes," he answered.

A pause. Then the shark-tooth smile stretched across her face again. "Well, I guess that's okay; I kind of enjoy intimidating my friends."

"I'm your friend?"

She frowned at him again: "Sure. You tried to rescue me! That makes you my friend."

"Oh, okay."

"But," she chuckled, "Be careful. I guarantee you'll be even more frightened pretty soon if you don't play nice and follow me out of this place - It'd make me upset. Oh yeah… _and there's a bunch of men looking for you, too. _That might also be a good reason to come with me!_"_

Ramrod straight, "Oh shit!" Tenchi cursed, glancing at the door for police to come storming in.

"Yep," she feigned disinterest, still mad enough to tease him a little bit. "I'll bet their outside right now. You're fairly well known around here - some of the local military know that you work out here, too, right? It shouldn't be too hard for the authorities to figure out where you are."

His eyes crept back to regard her carefully, still watching the entranceway through his peripheral vision. "So what do you propose? That we walk out the front door? Hand in hand maybe! How do I know I won't get in even more trouble just for talking to you!"

"Hey," she held up her hands. "If you want me to go away, just say so."

Honestly, Tenchi couldn't decide what he wanted: Yes, he _did _want her to go away; and no, he didn't want her to go away at all! He didn't know it yet, but such an offer was rarely given by the Space Pirate Ryoko. Countless banks, museums, armored cars, and even kings had begged her to leave them be in the past. Finally, Tenchi didn't realize how much more exiting his life would become asking her to stay - but for now he just didn't want to talk to the authorities again.

"Okay, Magic Woman… how do you think we should go? Just walk out the front door?"

Seriously, "No!" she laughed. "There _really are _men out there looking for you… and I think that they're pretty close now, too. It shouldn't take them long to get here. They might even be outside already. Too dangerous."

"Then how-

She shushed him. With a finger against his lips, she shook her head and whispered playfully in his ear, "Why don't you follow me upstairs to the bathroom, huh?"

Cheeks coloring, Tenchi stammered: "W-What!"

Slapping him playfully on the shoulder, "No! Nothing like that! You've got a dirty mind, Tenchi… even though I kind of like that! I just think that would be the best place for us to make our getaway. Nobody would suspect us."

"Your darn right!" Tenchi was aghast. "How the heck are we supposed to escape from the bathroom! There aren't any windows or doors! Do you want to tunnel outside!"

She smirked at him. "Yeah… basically. Go through the floor."

The argument would have persisted for some time had the authorities not entered the building. Tenchi's eyes bulged and he grabbed the woman's arm, actually tugging her up the staircase at the back of the room toward the restrooms. Luckily, in China the male and female restrooms were connected by a communal hand-washing area, so it didn't draw any extra attention when they both entered.

"Ooh… getting kind of forward, are we?" the woman teased him - managing to Tenchi's cheeks to color again despite the severity of his situation.

"Okay? Now whaaaa-!"

They sank through the floor together. Sank! The climactic moment from "Concierto in D Minor" erupted in Tenchi's ears as he was dragged down into the concrete by the shark. He would have screamed for help… but it was too late. His mouth got sucked under the stone.

And then he emerged on the other side. "Aaaahhhh! Help me! Oh God!"

Tight, iron-like fingers clamped hard over his mouth. "Hey!" the woman looked irritated at him, "Stop squirming so much! We're almost out!"

Acting very manly, Tenchi fainted…

New Kain awoke; he glared down at his feet, feeling the same panic that'd burst in his veins the day Ryoko had phased him out of the gym bathroom. But there wasn't solid concrete pooled around his feet this time; instead there was a thick, red substance down there: Blood.

His dark eyes stared at the inky color, unmoving, unblinking, trying to comprehend what he was seeing and where the mess had come from… until a wet groan jerked his attention toward the bar. The source of the groan wasn't visible - but the bar's crab-shaped logo was there. _Oh… he was in the Crab's Bar. How did he get here?_

For some reason, New Kain expected there to be a voice in his head talking about death and mayhem - probably instructing him to slay a few bar patrons. But there was nothing but cold silence in his head.

"Hello?" he called out in a voice he didn't recognize. He clutched his throat in shock - and noticed that his own hand was a deep black color.

"Holy Shit… HELLO!" he called again.

Having purged any traces of indecisiveness from his mannerisms decades ago - a necessity when leading a war against the most powerful nation in the Universe - New Kain marched forward at the bar ready to seize answers from whoever it was that was gurgling from behind the bar.

His last memories were of speaking to Washu about weapons caches and ore depletion in the Angeles sector of space - an extremely lucrative trade zone. Great for pirating. Together they'd solved a very difficult logistics problem involving transporting large quantities of war materials across highly monitored shipping lanes without arousing suspicion. They'd actually had to invent a new surveillance-slave computer virus together in order to achieve the solution.

But… now he was… _here. _In the Crabs Bar. With blood everywhere and somebody moaning behind the counter. Where on earth were his subordinates! Most of his command staff frequented this tavern! Had they been killed? Was the war lost? What happened!

Expectations of loss and failure filled New Kane's mind as he raced to the counter, but the reality of what he found behind it proved so much worse than anything he'd imagined: the girls. There was blood everywhere, and only princess Ayeka seemed to have recovered consciousness from whatever had happened. She was moaning weakly.

New Kain balked; what in God's name was _she _doing here! Ayeka's eyes opened - and she looked at him. The terror and loathing that burned in those eyes made New Kain recoil back so hard that he slipped and fell in the slick blood that was literally all over the floor. He didn't bother to rise back to his feet just yet - he'd seen so much blood over the girls' bodies that he now began to suspect from where it was that all the horrific pools of blood had come.

There was a weak flickering of Jurai power behind the counter - it was obvious that Ayeka was too wounded to muster enough strength to put any power behind it. New Kain rose back to his feet at once and towered over the counter - staring down in utter horror at the mangled princess. "Jesus, Ayeka! What's happened to you!"

Ayeka spit at him - she actually _spit _at him!

Again, New Kain expected to a hear a voice demanding murder inside his head. He even found himself waiting to hear it. But just like last time, the voice refused to surface, leaving him completely alone inside his head. In fact, somehow he could even sense that the voice was gone now - he'd never hear it again. Nanites had killed it…

"You… _monster!_" Ayeka hissed, slumping over as her eyes lost focus and swam drunkenly over the floor. New Kain reached down and cupped her chin, stabilizing the swaying woman before she could hurt herself. He used his other hand to check the other women: Washu, Mihoshi and Kiyone. Each had a pulse - barely - but they all looked to be in such bad shape that it was a miracle any were still alive.

Burns. There were horribly burns over all of their bodies. It was the same kind of wounds that energy weapons inflicted on unarmored flesh. New Kain had absolutely no idea what kind of an energy weapon could possibly pierce Ayeka's shield without also vaporizing her body - it would take a ship-mounted battle cannon to penetrate Jurai Power! Nor could he imagine Washu, Kiyone, or even Mihoshi falling victim to small arms fire! No! They were too strong for that!

"Jesus, Ayeka!" New Kain was on the verge of tears. "Tell me what happened! Help me save you!"

Glaring hate looked back at him - but this time there was something else in the princess's expression, too: Suspicion. But was it a good or bad thing? He couldn't tell. Why was she so furiously angry with him? Sure, there was a war… but it was fought on legitimate grounds. She understood that… so how had this damning hate been ignited?

Finally, in a stuper, New Kain stood up - cradling Ayeka in his arms - and saw something that would have caused him to void his bladder if he still had one:

Ryoko was pinned up on the wall - or perhaps it was more accurate to say that she was _crucified _upon the wall. Long poles of steel were embedded in her wrists, feet, and side, pinning her up against hard concrete. Vicious burns covered her body, too - scorching her from head to foot. The damage was so severe and widespread that the space pirate was virtually nude but it was almost impossible to tell. Awful blues, purples, and reds clothed her in wounds.

The worst thing was that she was still awake - writhing in agony, yes, but still awake - and looking straight at him in mournful conviction. _You did this to me…_

Kain's programming was gone - no longer was it there lurking like a malicious sentience trying to usurp control of Tenchi's body - but New Kain didn't resist when his memories started pulling him back into the past again - anything to escape this vision of hell!

He moved forward slowly, trying to figure out how to pry Ryoko off the wall without hurting her. And with each step, his surroundings changed into the scene into which he'd awoken thirty-five years ago on the day he first met Ayeka…


End file.
